How to Price Your Artwork: This Formula Makes it Easy (2024)

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Pricing artwork is one of the most complex tasks that emerging artists face, especially when they first begin to work with galleries and start to establish their art business. It’s easy to see by reading art business articles and books on art marketing that the opinions of the experts on how to price your artwork vary.

To make it even more complicated, we artists sometimes price with our emotions. Some artists overprice their work in order to impress viewers, hoping to make the artwork look more valuable. Sometimes this works, but usually only when the collector is naive or when the artwork is spectacular and gets the attention of serious collectors.

When I price with my emotion, I tend to lower my prices because I feel sorry that the collector has to spend so much. Now, don’t get on me for this … it’s the truth. I’m an empathetic type, but I need to be careful to not price my work based on how I feel about it or collectors. In other words, I need to look at how to sell and price my artwork objectively.

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Putting emotions aside, let me share a simple formula that many of my professional artist friends have used when first starting to sell their work. I still use this formula. Remember that the price of your artwork reflects your position and reputation in the art-selling world more than what your art looks like. If you’re relatively unknown to collectors and don’t have many credentials you really can’t get the same prices as artists who do have won competitions or shown in galleries.

When you’re first starting out, it’s a good idea to make your work as affordable as you can while being able to make a small profit. Don’t charge so little that you don’t break even. Remember that galleries often take a 50 percent commission from sales, so you’ll have to take that into consideration.

Price Your Artwork with this Formula

For much larger pieces, I’ll bring the price per square inch down a notch … maybe a dollar or two lower so that I don’t price my work beyond what my reputation can sustain. Alternately, for smaller works, I’ll increase the dollar per square inch because small works take almost as much effort as larger works, and I need to be compensated for my expertise, even when the work is miniature.

This is not the only way to price your artwork, but it’s one that keeps my prices consistent. Keep in mind that my prices were much lower 10 years ago when my artwork was relatively unknown to collectors. It’s important to note here that when I have a great selling year, I raise my prices by 10 percent. When the economy is poor or my sales are slow, I don’t raise prices at all.

I hope this will give you a place to start. If you’re just selling at local outdoor shows and are entering the art market, I would suggest that you keep your dollar amount much lower than mine. I’ve been selling my work for 14 years. There are ways that I could increase the worth and therefore the price of my art, but I’ll talk about that in a later blog post. – Lori

Lori Woodward is a talented artist who not only sells paintings but creates informational blogs for the art community. To learn more from Lori and read more about working as an artist, visit her website, here.

This article was first published in May 2017. Updated July 2023