12×16 pergolas

The prices spread so widely because these are three different products at one size. A sliding canopy is a shade frame you pull across on sunny afternoons and take down for winter. Open cedar or steel slats give a permanent structure and dappled light, but nothing closes. Louvers are the only roof here that shuts against rain, and adding a motor roughly doubles the price at this size.

If you mainly want shade over a patio you’ll use on dry days, the open-slat cedar kits are the best value. The Beaumont costs a little more than the Amerlife Cedrix, but Backyard Discovery covers it for five years and includes the concrete anchors. Cedar needs restaining every few years; that’s the trade for a frame that looks like part of the garden.

If you want to eat outside when it rains, you need louvers, and at 12×16 that means Erommy. The manual kit comes with pull-down privacy screens and does the job for about half the price of the motorized one, which only makes sense if you’ll move the roof several times a day. Our Erommy review covers the brand’s one-year warranty and return rules.

A sliding canopy sits in between: cheap shade you can pull back, but fabric doesn’t last like a hard roof.

A 12×16 takes a dining table for six at one end and a two-seat sofa at the other, with room to walk between. A 10×12 fits one or the other, not both.

The usable space is smaller than the roof, though, because the posts stand inside it. The Cedrix roof is 16 feet long, but its posts are 14 feet 10 inches apart, and Paragon’s Modena actually measures 11 feet 8 inches by 15 feet 8 inches. Measure your furniture against the post spacing on the listing, not the size in the name.

The permit line. The model building code most towns start from exempts a freestanding structure under 200 square feet, and a 12×16 is 192, so it often needs no building permit; a 12×14 is 168, so it clears the line with room to spare. Attach it to the house and it does, at any size. Ask your building department before you order; our pergola cost guide explains the rules.

The base. On a sound patio you just bolt it down. With no slab, Angi puts a new one at about $600 per 100 square feet, so roughly $1,150 under a 12×16.

Anchors. The Beaumont and the Erommy louvered kits include anchoring hardware; the Stratford doesn’t, so budget for it.

Which way it turns. A 16×12 is the same kit rotated, so check which side your patio needs the long run on before you pick a listing.