Pricing by Time or by Size — and Why It Matters
There are two defensible ways to price a finished piece, they produce different answers, and knowing which you are using is most of the discipline.
By time, or by size
The pricing calculator offers both. Time prices the labour: hours multiplied by an hourly rate. Size prices the area: width times height times a per-square-unit rate.
Either way, materials and studio overhead are added to reach a base cost, and an optional markup is applied on top to reach the asking price.
Time pricing rewards speed with less money
The obvious problem with hourly pricing for finished work: as you get better, pieces take less time, and the price falls. A painter who has spent twenty years learning to do in six hours what once took twenty is paid a third as much for the improvement.
It also penalises the medium rather than the outcome. A quick confident piece and a laboured one command the same price only if labour is the thing being sold, and for original art it usually is not.
Size pricing is consistent and blunt
Per-square-inch pricing is transparent, easy to explain, and produces a coherent price list across a body of work — which collectors and galleries both find reassuring. Two pieces the same size cost the same, which is defensible and easy to hold.
It is also indifferent to how good the piece is. A large weak painting prices above a small excellent one, and the rate has to be raised across the board to reflect growing reputation rather than adjusted piece by piece.
Use time to check, size to quote
The pragmatic approach many artists arrive at: price the work by size for consistency, then run the time method as a check. If the size-based price implies an hourly rate well below your calculated floor, the per-unit rate is too low.
That check is the useful part. It converts "this feels underpriced" into a number you can act on.
Markup is not profit
The markup percentage sits on top of a base that already includes your time and materials, and it is what absorbs the things the base cost cannot see: the pieces that do not sell, the discount a client eventually negotiates, the framing you throw in, the years spent learning to make the work at all.
A base cost with no markup is a break-even price, and a practice that only ever breaks even does not last.
The figure is a floor
The calculator's own caveat is the honest one: what a piece sells for depends on market, reputation and demand, none of which are inputs. What the arithmetic gives you is the price below which selling costs you money.
Knowing that number changes how a negotiation feels. It is the difference between deciding to discount and discovering afterwards that you did.
Raise the rate, not the individual price
When work starts selling reliably, the move is to raise the underlying rate — hourly or per square unit — so the whole body of work moves together. Adjusting single pieces upward produces a price list that cannot be explained, and collectors who bought early notice.
The two methods, side by side
At $63.77 an hour against $1.20 a square inch, with $60.00 of materials, $40.00 of overhead and a 20% markup:
| Size | Hours | Priced by time | Priced by size | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 × 10 in | 6 h | $579.14 | $235.20 | $343.94 |
| 16 × 20 in | 18 h | $1,497.43 | $580.80 | $916.63 |
| 24 × 36 in | 40 h | $3,180.96 | $1,364.16 | $1,816.80 |
| 36 × 48 in | 70 h | $5,476.68 | $2,608.32 | $2,868.36 |
The two agree in the middle and diverge at both ends, which is the whole problem. A small, fiddly piece is expensive by time and cheap by size; a large, fast one is the reverse.
What each method actually rewards
Time rewards difficulty and punishes fluency. The better you get, the less you earn for the same piece — which is a strange incentive to build a career on.
Size rewards scale and ignores everything else. It is predictable, easy to explain, and blind to the fact that a detailed small work can take longer than a large loose one.
What most working artists actually do
Price by size for consistency, then sanity-check by time. The size figure is what goes on the price list; the time figure is what tells you whether to take the job.
On the 8 × 10 row the two differ by $343.94. That gap is the signal: a size-priced small work that takes as long as a large one is a piece you are subsidising, and either the price per unit rises or the piece comes off the list.
Setting the price per unit honestly
Work it backwards from your rate rather than from what other people charge. Take a piece you have actually made, divide the time-priced figure by its area, and that is your true price per square inch. Here that is $3.68 on the 24 × 36.
Run both methods on three of your own pieces in the pricing calculator. Where they agree, the price list is safe; where they disagree, you have found the work that needs its own number.
The third method nobody admits to
Pricing by what the last one sold for. It is not unreasonable — it is market data — and it fails silently when costs rise, because nothing in it notices.
Use it as a ceiling check rather than a method. If the calculated price is far above what comparable work sells for, the gap is information: either the work has to change, the rate has to come down deliberately, or the market has to be a different one.
The check to run each year
Re-derive your price per unit from your current rate rather than carrying last year's forward. A rate that rose and a price list that did not is the quietest way for a practice to get busier and poorer at the same time.
Where the two methods must agree
At your most typical size. If the piece you make most often prices differently under the two methods, one of the inputs is wrong — usually the price per unit, occasionally the hours estimate.
Fix it by trusting the time method for that one size and back-solving the price per unit from it. Every other size then inherits a figure derived from your actual rate rather than from a number chosen because it looked reasonable — and the whole price list becomes internally consistent, which is worth more than any individual price on it being perfect.