If you've gone looking for how to price your art and come away more confused than when you started, that's not your fault. One person swears by price-per-square-inch. The next says charge by the hour. A third says add up your materials and multiply by some number they seem to have made up. They can't all be right... so which one are you supposed to use?
Here's the short answer for pricing your art as a new artist: don't pick one formula and hope. The three main pricing methods... square inch, linear inch, and time plus materials... each give you a different number, so the smartest thing you can do when you're new is run all three, see where they converge, and choose the price you can actually defend. Running them together is how you replace a guess with a number you can explain.
Pricing your art is a skill of judgment and not a magic calculator that spits out the one true number, and if you want the full picture of how that judgment works, start with how to price your art. This post is the on-ramp: how to use the methods together so you arrive at a first price without the spiral.
How should a new artist price their first paintings?
By comparing methods, not betting on one. The mistake almost every new artist makes is choosing only one formula and trusting it blindly, because each method looks at your work through a different lens and on its own can hand you a number that is quietly off... too low because it ignored how long the piece took, or too high because it ignored what your market actually carries.
Run two or three of them and something useful happens. Where they agree, you've found a number with real support underneath it. Where they disagree, you've learned something specific about that piece. That comparison is the difference between a price you guessed and a price you can stand behind when a collector asks how you got there.
What are the main pricing methods, and how are they different?
Three methods do most of the work, and each answers a different question.
Square inch measures size. You take the area of the piece (height × width in inches) and multiply by a per-inch rate. A 16×20 canvas is 320 square inches... at a $3 per-inch rate, that's $960. It's fast, and it keeps your whole catalog in proportion: bigger pieces always cost more than smaller ones, automatically. (BTW, the per-inch rate is the variable that scales with your career stage, so this is also the method that grows cleanest with you over time.)
Linear inch measures the piece a little differently... height plus width, times a rate. Some markets and some framed work price this way, and it can be a better fit depending on your style and where you sell.
Time plus materials measures effort and cost. You take the hours the piece actually took, multiply by your hourly rate, and add what the materials cost. This is the one that catches a small painting that ate three weeks of your life... the one square-inch pricing would have badly underpriced.
None of these is the "right" one and all of them are useful, because they are three angles on the same piece, and running them together is how you triangulate a number instead of gambling on a single formula.
How do you choose your rate when you have no sales history?
Whichever method you're running, it needs a rate from you... a per-inch rate, or an hourly rate. And that rate is not a number you pull out of the air, and it's not "whatever I won't get embarrassed asking for." It starts from something real: what it actually costs you to make the work where you live.
That means your time valued at the cost of living in your area, plus your materials, plus the overhead of running an art practice at all. Add those up and you get your base... the lowest number you can charge and still survive as an artist: keep painting, cover your supplies, buy good materials, pay yourself for your hours, and have a little left over so you can keep going. For most new artists that base sits higher than feels comfortable. That discomfort is normal. It usually means the number is finally honest.
This is the exact job Art Price Lab does for you. You set your wage target and overhead in your profile based on what you actually need to earn, and it runs every method off that honest foundation... so you're not guessing at the inputs either.
What if the methods give you different numbers?
They will, and that gap is information, not a reason to panic.
Say square-inch pricing says $960 and time-plus-materials says $1,400. That spread is telling you this piece took more out of you than its size suggests. Now you get to decide... with real numbers in front of you instead of a feeling. Maybe you price toward the higher number because the labor was real. Maybe the size number is closer to what your market carries and you hold there for now. Either way you're choosing from a defensible range, not pulling a number from fear.
That choice, where you land inside what the methods show you, is the judgment part of pricing, and it is yours. (Custom work tilts this further toward time and materials, since commissions carry revisions and risk that size-based formulas do not account for... when you get there, here is how to price a commission.)
How do you raise your prices as you grow?
The same comparison that gives you a first price gives you a clean way to raise it. As you sell consistently, build a waitlist, or attract demand, you raise the inputs... your per-inch rate, your hourly rate. Every method reprices off the new numbers, and your whole body of work moves up together, still in proportion.
That's the difference between a number you guessed and a system that grows with you. Guessing means starting over every time and hoping you arrive somewhere defensible. A system means you set your method and your rates once, then spend your energy making the work instead of agonizing over the math.
The quick version
- Don't price off one formula... run the three main methods (square inch, linear inch, time plus materials) and compare.
- Each method asks a different question... where they converge is your strong zone, and where they disagree tells you something about the piece.
- Set your rates from what it actually costs to make the work where you live... your time at local cost of living, plus materials and overhead. That's your base, not a number you invent.
- When the methods disagree, the gap is information... choose the price you can defend, not the lowest one.
- To raise prices as you grow, raise your rates once and every method moves up with you.
You don't need to be good with numbers to do this, and you don't need to bet your whole pricing on one formula you found on a forum. You need to see the methods together. Run your first piece through Art Price Lab... it runs all three at once, sets your rates from your location, and shows you where they converge, so you get a number you can explain instead of a number you picked. Price the one you have been avoiding, and see what it feels like to name it without flinching.