You are looking at a print. The price is $400. You do not know if that is fair or if you are the mark.
Here are four numbers that answer the question. If you cannot find them, you have found your answer.
One: The Price Per Square Foot
Divide the price by the artwork’s area in square feet. A 24 × 36 inch print is six square feet. At $400, that is $67 per square foot.
For a poster on archival matte paper with pigmented inks, printed to order, you should pay $8 to $20 per square foot. For a canvas stretched on wood, add $15 to $25. For a framed canvas, add another $30 to $50 depending on the frame.
At $67 per square foot for a poster, you are paying for a story about the artist, a fabricated edition number, or margin. All three are your problem, not your wall’s.
The Printasso gallery publishes every size and every price on the work itself. A 24 × 36 inch poster is $52. That is $8.67 per square foot. A canvas in the same size is $183, or $30.50 per square foot. The math is right there.
Two: The Shipping Cost
If the seller does not state the shipping cost on the page with the work, they are holding that number until you have decided you want it. That is not how you sell something honestly.
Flat-rate shipping to your region, stated once, visible before you click: that is the tell that the price on the work is the price. Free shipping within the continental United States is even clearer.
Calculated at checkout means calculated to hurt.
Three: The Lead Time
Made to order is honest if the seller tells you how long. Ten business days, fifteen business days: fine. Processing time varies: not fine.
You are paying for something that does not exist yet. The least they owe you is a number of days.
If the print is in stock and they will not say how long it takes to arrive, they are playing with your impatience. You will pay more to see it faster once you are in.
Four: The Material Weight or Thickness
This one is harder. A poster should tell you the paper stock – archival matte, fine art paper, satin, glossy. A canvas should tell you the material – cotton, polyester, a blend – and what the frame is made of.
If the only physical description is premium quality or museum-grade with no substance behind it, you are buying air. Museum-grade archival matte paper with pigmented archival inks is a real phrase with a real meaning. Museum-quality art print is not.
Watch for one exception: some suppliers publish no gram weight for one of their archival lines even though another line has a figure. If the seller names the paper stock accurately and stops there, that is honesty. If they invent a number, that is not.
What Silence Means
A site that hides any of these four numbers until you are ready to pay is a site that knows the price does not hold up to looking.
You are overpaying if the price per square foot is double what the material and printing justify. You are overpaying if shipping is a surprise. You are overpaying if the lead time is a secret. You are overpaying if the only thing they will tell you about the physical object is that it is beautiful.
The fix is to find a gallery that states all four on the page with the work, or to walk away and keep the $400.
When the Price Is Right
A fair price for a print is the cost of materials, the cost of printing it well, the cost of packing and shipping it without damage, and a margin that keeps the gallery able to pay its artists and critics.
Thirty to fifty percent margin on a poster is normal. Forty to sixty percent on a canvas is normal because the wood and the stretching cost more. If the framing is real wood and the hanging hardware is already attached, sixty to seventy percent is fine.
Anything above that and you are paying for a story you did not ask for.
The other tell: a gallery that prints to order and ships free within the continental United States is not hiding costs in the shipping line. The price on the wall is the price.
The Real Cost of Choosing Wrong
Overpaying for wall art costs you twice. Once in the money. Once in the doubt that makes you slower to hang it, slower to like it, slower to buy anything else.
Do the math before you decide. If the numbers are missing, so is your answer.
More from Charlotte: Charlotte’s writing. Prints ship free within the continental US.