By Tobias
Pricing gets easier once you have a method you can explain, to a buyer, to a gallery and to yourself. Here is how to price your art in short. Work out the lowest price you can accept. Use a size formula so your prices hang together. Check it against cost and time, and against artists who actually sell. Make sure it still works after a gallery's commission. Then raise prices in small steps when your work sells. The rest of this guide goes through each step, with worked examples.
Start with your floor
Before any formula, know the price below which a sale loses you money. Add up:
- Materials: canvas or paper, paint, stretcher bars
- Framing, if the work is sold framed
- Your time, at an hourly rate you would accept for skilled work
- A share of your other costs: studio rent, fair fees, photography, packing
That total is your floor for the piece. Keep it to hand: every method below has to land above it.
Method 1: price by size
The most common method for original paintings ties the price to the size, so a bigger work costs more and buyers can see the logic. Lori Woodward, writing for Artists Network, multiplies a painting's width by its height to get the area in square inches, then multiplies that by a rate. She uses $6 per square inch for her oil paintings, and then adds the cost of canvas and framing, doubled.
The same method works in centimeters. A 50 × 60 cm painting is 3,000 square centimeters. At €0.20 per square centimeter, that's €600. If the canvas and frame cost €60, doubling that adds €120, for €720 in all.
Keep one rate per medium, and adjust it at the edges. Woodward charges a little more per square inch for small works and a little less for very large ones, so neither ends up priced out of reach. There's no right rate for everyone: it depends on your market and your track record, which is what the next two methods check.
Method 2: price by cost and time
For work where size says little about the effort, like detailed drawings, ceramics or mixed media, build the price up from your floor and add a margin. The margin pays for the hours that went into work that didn't sell.
Take a small mixed-media piece: €40 of materials, 12 hours at €30 an hour, and €50 towards studio and fair costs come to €450. With a 30% margin, that's €585, and a clean price would be €595.
The weakness of this method is that a slow artist's work comes out more expensive than a fast artist's, and buyers don't see the hours. Use it as a check on your size price rather than on its own.
Method 3: check what similar work sells for
A formula keeps your prices consistent; the market tells you whether the level is right. ArtBusiness.com, the art business site of Alan Bamberger, suggests finding out what artists with similar credentials, followings and exhibition experience charge. Compare like with like: medium, size, where they show and how long they have been selling. Give more weight to work that actually sold than to prices on work that sits.
Put the three together
If your size price, your cost-and-time price and the comparable artists land close together, you have found your level. If the size price falls below your floor, raise your rate. If it sits well above artists who sell steadily, expect to wait a long time for a buyer. Write your rate down and use it for every new piece, so your prices stay consistent from one work to the next.
If a gallery sells your work
A gallery takes a commission on every sale. Carolyn Edlund of Artsy Shark puts the standard gallery commission at 50% of the retail price, with some co-op galleries and nonprofits taking less. So set your prices so that you are still profitable when you receive half. For the €720 painting above, a gallery sale leaves you €360; if your floor for that piece is higher, your rate is too low.
When a gallery shows your work, don't undercut it. A collector who finds the same piece cheaper at your studio won't buy from the gallery again, and the gallery has little reason to keep showing you. ArtBusiness.com is plain about it: for gallery sales, you should still charge gallery prices. If you sell only directly, with no gallery, the same site suggests pricing at 40 to 60% of gallery retail instead.
Offer something at every budget
Not every buyer starts with a large original. Bamberger suggests making smaller or less complex works that you can offer at more affordable prices, because first-time buyers often like to start with more modestly priced works. Small originals, studies and prints give a new buyer a way in, and some come back for a larger piece later.
The same logic applies to prints: an open edition should cost less than a limited edition, and a limited edition less than the original.
When and how to raise your prices
Raise prices when demand tells you to, not because a year has passed. Bamberger's signal is when at least half of what you produce sells within a relatively short time of being finished. Artists answering the Clark Hulings Fund's question say the same: raise prices when you are selling out, or mostly selling out, at your current prices.
How much? Bamberger calls an increase of 10 to 15% reasonable in that situation. Woodward raises her prices by 10% after a great selling year, and not at all when sales are slow. Small, regular steps work better than big jumps, because prices are hard to bring back down. As one artist in the Clark Hulings Fund's Q&A puts it, "Once you go up, you can't come back down, so move slowly."
When you raise your prices, raise them on older work that is still for sale too, including work in galleries, so your prices stay consistent.
Show your prices
A hidden price makes a buyer do the work of asking, and many won't. At fairs, The Other Art Fair's directors recommend displaying prices clearly throughout your booth. Online, a visible price, or at least a price range, saves a buyer the step of writing to you first.
Keep your prices in one place
Prices drift when they live in several places: a spreadsheet, a gallery's list, your website. In Canvy's Artwork Manager, each artwork keeps its price and availability, from for sale to sold. It also keeps what the piece cost to make and how long it took, so your floor and your price sit side by side. You choose whether each price shows publicly.
How to price your art: a checklist
- Work out your floor: materials, framing, time and other costs
- Choose a rate per square inch or square centimeter for each medium
- Check it against cost and time, and against similar artists who sell
- Make sure you would still profit on half of the price
- Keep your prices consistent wherever your work is shown
- Offer something smaller for first-time buyers
- Review once a year, and raise in small steps when work sells
Questions artists ask
Should I price by size or by time?
For originals in the same medium, by size: buyers can follow the logic, and your prices stay consistent. Use cost and time to check that the size price stays above your floor.
Can I lower my prices?
You can, but buyers who paid the old price notice, and it's hard to undo. If work isn't selling, try smaller pieces at lower prices before cutting the price of your main work.
What if a buyer asks for a discount?
Decide your answer before anyone asks. A small reduction for buying several pieces, or for a returning collector, keeps your prices intact; a discount for anyone who asks undercuts them.
Knowing your niche also makes it easier to find the right artists to compare yourself with: see our guide to finding your art niche.
Want your prices, costs and sales in one place? Keep them in Artwork Manager. Canvy is free to start.
