How to price your work
November 15, 2021
How do you price your art to sell?
Art Price Calculator
- Don’t price your work too low. If you don’t value it, why should a potential buyer?
- Do NOT price your work according to emotion. Price according to size.
- Only sell your best work. Initially, because you’re trying to establish a reputation and later on because you’re trying to maintain it.
- If you want to include a painting in an exhibition because of it’s one of your best but don’t really want to sell it, don’t be tempted to price it high in the hope it won’t.
- Don’t undercut the price set in a gallery through a later private sale. You risk alienating the gallery owner who displayed your work in the first place.
- Look at your final price and compare it again with local prices. Is it realistic given the market and your reputation? You can always increase your prices next time.
- Getting a painting to the stage where you’re satisfied with it is hard, but putting a price to it can be even harder.
- Under-price yourself and you may make your art look worthless, as well as lose money rather than make it.
- Overprice yourself and you risk never selling anything. How you decide to approach it depends somewhat on your personality, experience, and stage your art career is at.
The Simple Approach
Price Determined by Standard Sizes
- All paintings that are the same size all have the same price tag, regardless of the subject, how long it you to finish it,or how much you happen to like it.
- Your price list set out by size, with an additional set premium for commissioned paintings over finished paintings
A Mathematical Approach
Price Calculated by Area
- You decide on a price for a square inch (or centimeter), then multiple the area of a painting by this, then round it up to a sensible figure.
- Most people will use a calculator for this approach, but if you can do it with mental arithmetic then you never have worry about it
Price Formula
- Multiply the painting’s width by its length to arrive at the total size, in square inches / centimeter.
- Then multiply that number by a set Dollar/ Rand amount that’s appropriate for your expertise and time in the market.
- Then calculate your cost of canvas and materials used. (ex R1000.00)
- Double that number.
- I price my oil paintings at R0.90 per square cm.
- Then I put it all together: R13500.00 + R2000 = R15500.00 (the Artist Cut).
- Any gallery will add 50% on top of that price plus Vat.
- The client will then pay R31000.00 plus Vat
- 100 cm x 150 cm = 15000 square cm
- 15000 x R0.90 = R13500.00
- R1000.00 for canvass
- R1000.00 x 2 = R2000.00
- R0.90 per square cm
- R13500 + R20000 = R15500.00 Artist Price
- R15500 + 50% = R31000.00 Gallery Price
Use an Art Price Calculator to do the lifting for you.
Take the mystery out of pricing your art! Art Price Calculator shows the average cost of a piece of art (based on details you provide) by searching millions of real-world examples.
• Art pricing data from millions of pieces, sampled from some of the most popular art selling websites
• A clean and simple interface
• Ability to filter by size, type (e.g. painting, photograph, illustration, etc.), style, subject and more
• Handy save feature – keep a record of your estimates and attach images if desired
• Option to increase the amount of your art price estimates up to 200%
• Support for multiple currencies, with exchange rates updated daily
• Imperial and metric units
The surface of encaustic is unique, and the luminosity, light, and depth of the surface is what draws collectors and curators to the form.
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