Painting Cost Calculator

Add up five things: canvas, paint, brush wear, varnish and framing. For an A3 painting in acrylic, the calculator's defaults give you canvas £25, paint £60, brushes-and-other £15, varnish £8 and frame £40 - £148 in materials before you've picked up a brush. For oil at £15 per tube vs acrylic at £8.50 it climbs another £30-£50 per painting depending on coverage. Watercolour sits between at £12 per tube but uses less per piece, often £40-£50 of paint per A3.

The number that surprises new artists is brush wear. A Pro-Arte Series 200 round brush costs £12-£18 and lasts maybe 30 paintings if you wash it properly. Across 30 paintings that's £0.40-£0.60 per painting in brush amortisation, plus replacements when one inevitably goes hard with dried paint. Bottles of medium, varnish and white spirit also need amortising; the calculator's £15 'brushes/other' line covers that for an average mid-career painter. Track your real spending for three months and the figure you get is usually within 20% of this default.

Most painters undercharge for time. The calculator defaults to 10 hours at £25 per hour - that's £250 of labour. For a serious A3 oil painting that involves layers and drying time, 10 hours is conservative; a mid-detail work in oils can easily take 25-40 hours. £25 per hour is what a self-employed designer charges; £50 per hour matches an established artist with a gallery, and £100+ per hour is realistic only when collectors are buying.

Set an hourly rate you'd be willing to take if a client offered you a private commission. If you're emerging, that's typically £20-£35. If you're established with a price track record at galleries, it's £45-£80. Remember the calculator's hourly rate is your cost to the painting, not your final selling rate; the markup on top is where your gallery margin and profit live. For other side-income hourly thinking, see the [side hustle hourly rate](/side-hustle-hourly-rate) calculator.

Markup is the percentage you add on top of total cost. A £148 materials cost plus £250 labour is £398 total cost; a 50% markup makes the painting £597; 100% markup makes it £796. The calculator defaults to 50% markup, which is conservative but realistic for self-represented sales. Galleries that take 40-50% commission effectively need you to set the markup at 100% to come out at the same net.

The mistake painters make is calling 'I add 50% to my materials' a markup. Materials might be £148; 50% of that is £74; the painting goes up at £222. That's not enough to pay for your time, let alone profit. Always include labour in the cost base before you mark up. The calculator does this automatically - the markup percentage applies to materials + labour combined. If the resulting number feels too high to your target buyer, lower the labour first (paint faster, or paint smaller), not the materials.

If you sell direct (Etsy, your own site, art fairs), the price the buyer pays is the price you set in this calculator. If you sell through a gallery, double the calculator's selling price - the gallery takes 40-50% and you keep the rest. So a calculator output of £597 needs to retail at £1,200 in a gallery for you to net the same £597. Pricing inconsistently across channels (lower direct, higher gallery) is one of the most common ways emerging artists damage their gallery relationships.

The pragmatic approach: pick the gallery price first using the calculator, then decide whether to also sell direct at the same price (most galleries require this in their contracts) or only through the gallery. If you're emerging and self-represented, set the calculator's markup at 50%, treat the result as your direct price, and revisit when you have a track record. Pair this with the [art pricing calculator](/art-pricing-calculator) to compare cost-based pricing against per-square-inch industry rates.