There is nothing more daunting to a beginner artist than the question, “How much do you charge?”

Putting a price on your artwork can make your stomach drop, trigger imposter syndrome, and cause you to get flustered.

The idea of selling your work can sometimes lead to giving your paintings away for free, convincing yourself that the ‘exposure’ will bring future commissions.

With this in mind, I wanted to share my experiences with the emotions that can hold you back, the factors that influence the value of your art, and how to develop a pricing strategy. Hopefully, this will give you the clarity and confidence you need so you’ll be prepared the next time someone asks about your prices!

How much should I charge for my art?

You’ve poured your soul into each piece, laboured over the canvas, and tweaked it until it feels right. Now comes the moment of truth:

How much is it worth?

Pricing your work is a balance between perceived value, market trends, and career growth, but often, the main problem is an inside job.

Getting over imposter syndrome

Many beginners struggle with imposter syndrome, feeling that their work isn’t good enough or that they don’t deserve to charge for their creations.

When a customer utters the immortal words, “How much is that?” You have to try to look at the situation through different eyes and think logically about it. If you were making any other product, determining a price would be pretty simple.

You’d calculate your material costs, set an hourly rate for the time it took to make the product and compare your price to what the market or shops around you are selling for.

This would give you a baseline.

Nearly all of the factors below can help guide prices for your artwork, particularly when taking on commissions.

1. Time Spent /Customisation and Personalization

Calculate the hours you have spent creating the piece to give you a baseline. Commissions are often tailored to the buyer’s unique vision and theme; this level of customisation involves design work and sometimes personalised colour schemes, which can take longer.

2. Quality of Materials

Artist-quality materials can significantly increase the cost and justify a higher price. Consider the cost of your materials—canvas, paint, brushes, or digital tools.

3. Size and Complexity

A piece with intricate details or a complex composition can be priced higher due to the skill and effort involved.

Landscapes or seascapes can often be larger scale, increasing material costs and the time required to complete them.

Portraits, in particular, require skilled craftsmanship and can take hours of meticulous work.

4. Consultation and Planning

Designing a portrait often involves multiple consultations with the subject to understand their preferences, mutilple sittings, and make adjustments.

5. Your Experience

As a beginner, your prices may be lower than those of more established artists. However, as your portfolio grows and you gain recognition, you can adjust your prices accordingly.

Ego is the Enemy

The intrinsic value of art is deeply personal. It’s tied to the time, effort, and emotion spent creating it.

For some artists, this value is immeasurable; it’s the culmination of years of practice, the perfect stroke of a brush, and the precise blending of colours. Or it might be a deeply personal piece that has felt like a struggle.

However, while intrinsic value is important, it doesn’t always align with market value—the price someone is willing to pay.

The market value of your artwork is influenced by factors like your reputation as an artist, the materials used, the size of the piece, and current trends.

You may feel a piece is worth £2,000 because of the weeks you spent perfecting it, but if your audience sees it as worth £200, that’s the market value.

This is where your ego gets involved.

If you were offering a coffee and walnut cake for sale and somebody said,” No thanks, I don’t like walnuts,” you wouldn’t take offence, think the walnuts were bad, or feel overwhelmed; you would just think. No worries.

There will be someone in the room who loves walnuts! You just need to find them.

Selling art is like selling anything.

“To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end. This is what it means to serve: improving another’s life and, in turn, improving the world.” –  Daniel H. Pink, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

The Endowment Effect

The worst time to put a price on your work is the second you’ve finished it.

Why?

You might price it too high.

The endowment effect is a cognitive bias that can cause people to value something they own more than its market value, often irrationally.

It’s why companies offer free trials, or car dealerships get you to sit in the front seat of a car. The more you have a personal connection to the item, the higher the value you place on it.

Suppose you’ve been gruelling for hours, days, or years! on a painting, you’ll have a lot stronger bond to the value you feel it deserves, due to the investment it took you to create it.

(p.s. Ninja move: You can use this effect to your advantage by offering a 30-day free home trial of the artwork)

(Further Reading: The Endowment Effect, Why Perceived Value Increases with Ownership)

Mirror your market

Mirroring your market can be a great place to start if you’re unsure how to gauge your prices.

Look at local shops or galleries selling similar paintings and note the other artists’ pricing range. Also, look for red dots—the little dots that are placed over a painting label when it sells. This gives you an idea of the actual price someone is willing to pay.

There are often pricing bands that the majority of works fit into. Of course, there will be outliers selling for thousands, if not millions, of pounds, but this guide is for beginners.

As a general view of local or small galleries, 80% of the sales will often be under £1,000 in price.

The most popular price range for a small (under 30cm)—to medium-sized painting (under 60cm) is usually £150 – £500

Understanding Social Media vs Gallery Representation

If you start selling in the UK, you won’t have to charge VAT (value-added tax) on your sales. (There is a threshold of £90,000, based on your business’s turnover, not profits)

However, most galleries are VAT registered, so there will be 20% VAT on any sales you make through the gallery.

Physical Galleries often take a 50% commission on your sale price, so you must be aware of this when setting your prices. (online galleries like Saatchi take a 40% commission)

Here’s a quick breakdown:

Sale Price on a U.K based gallery wall not framed – £645.00

VAT amount: = £107.50
Since the gallery is VAT registered, the sale price includes 20% VAT.

Gallery Commission = £268.75
Gallery usually has a commission of 50% of the ex-vat sale price.

Artist’s Share: = £268.75

Deduct Material Costs, Material Costs: £40.00

Artist’s Profit after materials:

£268.75 – £40.00 = £228.75

Final Profit for the Artist –  £228.75

So the customer sees a £645.00 painting, but you, as the artist, receive £228.75. Why would you ever want to get into a gallery?

Collectors, contacts and kudos.

Many collectors will not buy directly from an artist but only through a gallery. Established gallery owners know their best clients well and will have a list of paintings or styles they are looking to buy.

Also, seeing a collection of paintings together on a gallery wall can give customers more confidence that the size and style will fit what they want. Many galleries offer hanging services, art advice, and payment schemes. They have retail spaces in prime locations, and there is prestige involved in purchasing a painting from a gallery.

They also talk to customers, tell your story and don’t show any of those personal insecurities you might have about your own work!

To start with, you’ll be doing everything, but the goal is to get to a point where it makes sense for you to spend your time painting.

If you begin with the idea of gallery representation as a goal, you can incorporate that into your pricing.

‘In an ideal world your prices should also include a buffer to make it worthwhile for someone to represent you. Artists, in my opinion, need to distance themselves from daily commerce — this is why you need to be able to reward dealers who can share your magic with the greater world. Intelligent, long-term pricing accommodates friendly partnerships, maintains your integrity, and makes your progress viable in an ongoing manner. Intelligent, long-term pricing buys your freedom.’ – Robert Genn, The Painters Keys

Starting on social media can be a great place to start, as many gallery owners are also looking for new talent. If you’re selling consistently online, you become a much more attractive option for a gallery.

Now that you understand the factors influencing your art’s value, it’s time to develop a pricing strategy.

Developing an art pricing strategy

You can price in many ways; here are some common art pricing methods:

• Pricing artwork by square inch
• Pricing artwork by time spent
• Pricing artwork by comparison
• Grab a number from the air!

Cost per inch is one of the simplest to use. You can tweak the cost depending on your working style. Create tiers and scales for different sizes.

You can also price drawings or sketches less per square inch than paintings.

If you paint small, highly detailed portraits, the cost per inch will be higher than for a more impressionistic style, reflecting the time it takes to create the piece.

Art Pricing Calculator

This is a nice and simple art pricing calculator.

You can click the toggle at the top to choose either time-based or price-per-inch-based pricing.

There is also a box to enter the cost of materials. (You could also add overheads into this section)

Here’s an example of a 6 x 8-inch Art Pricing Chart:

6 x 8 inch (48 square inches)

£1.50 per square inch – £72

£2.00 per square inch – £96

£3.00 per square inch – £144

£4.00 per square inch – £192

How do you decide on the price per inch?

Start with £1 or 2

This is a baseline figure.

After you’ve sold five paintings at this price, increase the number.

Rinse and repeat.

One of the most important things to remember is that if you don’t have any prices on your website or social accounts, customers will often assume it’s super expensive or not for sale at all. 99% of the time, they won’t email to enquire about the cost either.

How to label your paintings on Instagram.

If you want to sell your paintings, potential customers need to be aware they are for sale. Here’s a format you can try:

All of these original paintings are available to buy.
Email me at [your email] or DM me for more information.

Write the size in cm or inch – 15 x 15cm
Write the medium – Oil on Canvas
Write the title – “View over Delft.”
Is post & packaging extra or included? – Plus P&P
Is there a framing option or do you sell unframed? – Unframed

It will clearly state that your paintings are for sale, that they are originals, and indicates the size.

And as a final note, Van Gogh sold ‘The Red Vineyard’ for 400 francs (then £16) at a Brussels exhibition in March 1890. Four months before his suicide, it was the only painting he sold in his lifetime.

In 2022, one of his paintings sold at Christine’s auction house for over $117,000,000 million. (£88 million)

With a price range between $20 and $117 million, it’s no wonder determining the price for your first painting can be intimidating!