When an interior designer reaches out about your work, the conversation usually goes to price quickly, and if you have never sold through trade before, the question of what to charge them versus what you would charge a collector coming to you directly can feel murky enough that you either make up a number on the spot or change the subject entirely and hope they bring it up again later.

Price art for interior designers off your standard retail first, then apply a 20–30% trade discount. Never invent a separate number for trade clients. The discount comes off what you would charge anyone else, which only works if your standard pricing is already structurally sound.

That one principle resolves most of the confusion around trade pricing.

Why designers get a discount at all

Interior designers are intermediaries. When a designer places your work with a client, they are doing sales and placement work that you did not have to do... they are sourcing, curating, presenting your work to someone who may never have encountered you any other way, and managing all the logistics of getting the piece into an installed project.

That intermediary function is what earns the discount. The designer earns the margin between your trade price and what they charge their client, which may be your retail price or higher. You get a buyer you would not have reached on your own. Everyone gets something, which is how good distribution relationships work. (BTW, this is also why it is worth asking a designer you like how many projects they do per year before you decide how much flexibility to extend them. A designer who does 30 projects annually is a very different conversation than one who is placing a single piece for one client and expects the same treatment.)

The trade discount standard across most of the market sits between 20 and 30 percent. Twenty percent is common for artists earlier in their careers or for designers buying individual pieces. Thirty percent typically comes with higher volume, established relationships, or designers who are actively placing your work across multiple projects.

Your trade pricing is only as clean as your standard retail. If you have not established a consistent retail price using a structured method, start with how to price your art first.

How to set your trade pricing in practice

The starting point is your standard retail price: the number you would charge a collector who came to you directly through a gallery, your website, or a show. If you have run your formula, your retail is already calculated. From there, the math is simple:

  • Retail price: $800 / 20% trade discount: $160 / Trade price: $640
  • Retail price: $1,500 / 30% trade discount: $450 / Trade price: $1,050

You charge the designer the trade price. They manage the markup to their client. You do not need to know or approve what they charge their client... that is their business. Your business is protecting your retail integrity and your trade margin.

What you never do: create a separate pricing structure just for trade. If you price originals differently for designers than for collectors without a systematic discount applied off the same retail number, you introduce inconsistency that is very hard to explain if two people compare notes, and at some point two people will compare notes. A designer who knows what a collector paid for a similar piece will absolutely ask why the discount was not calculated off that number.

What trade clients typically buy

Understanding the trade buying context helps you price appropriately.

Unframed work is the norm. Designers typically want pieces without frames so they can specify their own framing to match the project. If your standard price includes framing, offer an unframed-only price for trade clients... it simplifies the math for both of you and removes a variable the designer is going to change anyway.

The price range that moves most easily through trade tends to be $100–500 unframed for work placed in residential or commercial interiors. This is not the ceiling at all, and significant commissions or high-end residential projects can go much higher, especially with established designers who have a budget and a vision already in place. But if you are just starting to work with trade clients, this is where a lot of the accessible volume actually sits.

Commissions are a real trade opportunity. A designer working on a large residential or commercial project may want something custom: specific dimensions, palette, or subject matter. Commission pricing through trade gets complicated quickly because the time-plus-materials method is the right formula, and some designers are not accustomed to artists charging for the specificity of custom work. Setting a clear commission pricing structure up front, your standard hourly rate plus materials plus a custom-work premium, protects you before the conversation about what "custom" means starts going sideways.

If you haven't built out that hourly-rate-plus-materials number yet, tracking your time and materials honestly is where that starts... you need a real number before you can defend a custom-work premium to a designer who's going to ask why it costs what it costs.

Setting up a trade program

If you are working with designers regularly or want to, a simple trade program makes the process more professional for both sides:

A trade application or terms sheet. A one-page document that establishes: your standard trade discount percentage, that it applies to your published retail prices, payment terms (net 30 or net 60), and that trade prices are confidential and should not be published or shared publicly. This protects your retail pricing integrity and also just makes you look like someone who has done this before. (BTW, even if you have never worked with a trade client in your life, having this document ready when someone asks makes a very different impression than saying "let me figure that out and get back to you.")

A portfolio or lookbook. Designers work fast and make decisions visually. A curated PDF of your available work, with dimensions, medium, retail price, and a note that trade pricing is available on request, is more useful than a link to your full website. Make it easy for them to see what you have.

A point of contact. Designers need to know they can reach you when they are on a project deadline. Being responsive, clear about availability, and straightforward on terms is as much of the trade relationship as the work itself.

When a designer asks for more than 30%

It happens. Some designers ask for 40 or 50 percent, sometimes framed as an agency fee structure or a "we have a lot of projects" negotiation.

Whether to go there depends on your situation. If a designer is placing multiple pieces across multiple projects and genuinely creating significant volume, there may be a case. If they are asking for an exceptional discount on a single piece, the math probably does not work for you, and you should feel completely fine saying so.

What you protect, always: your ability to charge retail to collectors who come to you directly. If your trade discount gets high enough that a designer could undercut your retail price to their clients and still make margin, your retail integrity is at risk. That is the line, and it is worth knowing where it is before someone asks you to cross it.

Running the discount off real numbers

The 20–30% range above is a starting point. It only protects you if your retail number underneath it is actually right. A lot of the trade-pricing advice out there stops at the percentage and never touches the number it's a percentage of... which is how artists end up discounting off a retail price that was already too low to begin with.

Run your actual square-inch, linear-inch, and time-plus-materials numbers before you quote a trade discount. If you haven't priced the piece yet, Art Price Lab's calculator gets you there in a few minutes... plug in the size and medium, apply your multiplier, and you have a defensible retail baseline before the designer conversation even starts. Then the trade math above is just arithmetic on a number you can stand behind.

Quick version

  • Trade pricing is your standard retail minus a 20–30% discount. Never invent a separate number.
  • Designers earn the discount by doing placement and sales work you did not have to do.
  • Standard trade range: 20% for smaller relationships; up to 30% for volume or established partnerships.
  • Unframed work at $100–500 is where a lot of trade volume moves, but there is no ceiling.
  • Set up simple trade terms in writing: discount rate, payment terms, confidentiality on trade pricing.
  • Protect your retail integrity: your trade price should never be so low that the designer can undercut your direct prices.

Art Price Lab sets your retail baseline so trade pricing is a clean percentage calculation, not a guess. artpricelab.com