The present bedding factors used by the clay pipe industry are dependent only on the bedding type. This practice has led to extremely conservative designs of these buried pipes and to their perceived inability of support deep covers of soil. Due to this conservative approach, clay pipe installations under deep fills were considered to be impossible and other materials have been used instead despite the many advantages clay pipe has offered for these projects. In this study, new bedding factors were predicted by the finite element analyses of buried vitrified clay pipes with four types of backfill and bedding materials. These bedding factors were calculated as the ratio of the maximum tensile strain in the computer-simulated three-edge bearing test of vitrified clay pipes to that in the finite element analyses of buried pipes. The new bedding factors are generally higher than those given in the current ASTM specifications. It is shown that the bedding factors are affected by the backfill material type and compaction density, backfill height, trench width, and pipe diameter. Design practice around the world in also summarized in this paper.