It is the first question everyone asks and the last one most websites answer. So here are our actual prices, what moves them, and what a fair quote should always include — written by a studio that publishes its price table instead of hiding behind a “request a quote” button.
The short answer
A hand-painted oil commission costs between $189 for a single-subject 8 × 10 in study and $2,690 for a 36 × 48 in canvas with four subjects. Between those two points sit the sizes most people actually buy: $289 for a 12 × 16 in, $389 for a 16 × 20 in, $549 for a 20 × 24 in, $789 for a 24 × 36 in, $1,090 for a 30 × 40 in. Each additional subject — a second person, a pet, a horse in the background — adds to the price in a way every honest studio can quote before you commit to anything.
That is the whole ladder. If a website will not show you its ladder, it is inviting you to climb blind.
What you are actually paying for
The materials are the smallest part of the bill. A good cotton canvas, professional-grade paints and a varnish layer come to $40–$60 even at large sizes. What you are paying for is weeks of a trained person's time. A 24 × 36 in portrait with three subjects is realistically forty-plus hours of work spread over five to seven weeks — not because the painter is slow, but because oil paint dries in layers and each layer must cure before the next one goes on.
A price that looks too good for real oil usually is. Oil has a floor set by physics — nobody can paint, dry and varnish a canvas in three days, at any price.
The five factors that genuinely move the price
1. Canvas size
The single biggest driver, and the one you control most easily. Doubling the canvas more than doubles the work on a portrait: faces get larger, which means likeness has to survive at a scale where every proportion error is visible. This is also why our price jumps between sizes are not linear — they track painting time, not square inches.
2. How many subjects
Every face is its own drawing problem: its own likeness, its own light, its own layers. A second person typically adds $90–$360 depending on canvas size, and pets count as subjects too — a dog's fur is famously slower to paint than a person's cheek.
3. Background complexity
A calm studio wash or softly blurred setting is standard. A full scene — the family home, a garden in bloom, a harbour — takes real time and is priced as an addition. One thing that should not cost extra: removing clutter from the background. Decluttering is a five-minute conversation, not a line item.
4. Photo restoration and compositing
Old, creased, faded or torn photographs are welcome, and restoring them is a standard add-on — typically $60–$70. Merging two photographs into one composition (grandparents from one frame, grandchildren from another) is routine work and quoted the same way. If a studio refuses old photos outright, that tells you more about their process than their price list does.
5. Deadline
Rush work exists, but honest studios quote it honestly: real oil has physical minimum drying times, and “rush” in oil means rearranging the studio's schedule, not skipping chemistry. If you need a painting for a date, say so at the start — planning backwards is always cheaper than paying forwards.
What a $40 “hand-painted” listing actually is
Texture gel printed onto canvas, or increasingly, AI output passed off as craftsmanship. The tell is never the wording — it is the combination of price and speed. $40 with three-day worldwide delivery is a logistics triumph that has nothing to do with paint. We wrote a whole guide on telling oil from print in sixty seconds, but the price and the timeline alone will expose most of them.
What should never cost extra
- The digital mock-up — the composition preview you approve before anyone paints. Free, always.
- The first revision round on the finished piece.
- Shipping. Paintings travel rolled in a rigid tube, insured, worldwide, at our cost.
- Asking. A fixed price and delivery date, usually within a day of sending your photo.
If any of those appear as line items on a quote, you have learned something useful about the studio before paying them anything.
Commissioning a painting vs. buying one that exists
If you want your subject — your family, your dog, your grandparents' old photograph — a commission is the only honest product. But if what you want is a finished painting for a specific wall, an existing original can be faster and sometimes cheaper than a commission of the same size. Our original paintings are one-of-one canvases from $690, each with a numbered certificate, and they ship in days rather than weeks. Plenty of rooms are finished by a painting nobody had to wait for.
How to budget without regrets
- When two sizes are close in price, take the larger. The most common note we hear after delivery is “I wish I'd gone one size up.” A 12 × 16 in reads as a shelf picture; a 20 × 24 in reads as a room's anchor.
- Spend on subjects before size, if you must choose. A smaller canvas with both grandparents beats a large one with a cropped cousin.
- Budget time like money. Five to seven weeks is normal; gifts with a deadline need planning, and a rush fee is dearer than a calendar reminder.
- Ask for the total, in writing, before approving anything. A fixed quote covering price, size, subjects and delivery date is the whole point of the enquiry — use it.
How payment normally works
The standard structure across honest studios: a deposit (typically 30–50%) after you approve the mock-up, the balance before shipping. Nothing should be charged before you have seen a price, a delivery date and a composition preview you like. If a studio wants full payment up front, before showing you what they intend to paint, that is not a pricing policy — it is a warning.
The honest summary: a real oil painting costs what weeks of a skilled person's time cost. The price is knowable in advance, the process is visible while it happens, and the result outlives the receipt by decades. Send us a photograph and we will put a fixed number on yours, usually within a day.