Short answer: a hand-painted oil commission takes 5–7 weeks door to door — 3–5 weeks of painting, about a week of drying and varnishing, and 3–5 days of courier transit. Anyone promising dramatically faster is selling you something oil paint physically cannot be.
The full timeline, stage by stage
| Stage | Time | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Quote & mock-up | 1–3 days | Fixed price, then a digital composition mock-up you approve before painting starts |
| Painting | 3–5 weeks | Painted by hand in layers; you receive two work-in-progress photos |
| Drying, varnish & QC | 4–7 days | The final layer cures, protective varnish is applied, the piece is inspected and photographed |
| Your approval | You set the pace | Nothing ships until you say yes to the photo of the finished canvas |
| Shipping | 3–5 business days | FedEx, DHL or UPS, tracked, insured, rolled in a rigid tube |
Why oil cannot honestly be rushed
Every oil painting is built in layers, and each layer must dry before the next one goes on — a rule painters call fat over lean. Skip it and the painting cracks, sometimes within months, always within years. The drying is chemical, not a matter of working faster: a layer of oil paint needs days to be touch-safe and weeks to be structurally sound.
Three weeks of painting is genuinely fast for a portrait. Three days is not a painting — it is a print with texture gel, or an AI image on canvas. Real oil has a smell, a drying time, and physics.
The varnish deserves its own line in the table because it is where impatient studios cut corners. A painting shipped before the final layer has cured will mark its own packing tube — and the marks become your problem.
What legitimately changes the timeline
- Size and subjects. A single-subject 12 × 16 in sits at the fast end; a 36 × 48 in with four subjects eats the full five weeks and more.
- Rush commissions exist — with a price. We paint rush orders in three weeks for +$90, and we only accept them when the calendar genuinely allows it.
- Your approval speed matters. The mock-up and finished-canvas approvals are the two moments where the clock waits on you. A same-day reply keeps the schedule tight.
- Photo restoration adds days, not weeks — typically included within the normal window.
How the alternatives compare
| Seller type | Typical promise | What is really happening |
|---|---|---|
| Print-on-demand shops | 3–5 days | Inkjet on canvas — a print, no painter involved |
| Factory-style studios | 10–15 days | Assembly-line painting on thin colour blocks; real paint, minimal layering |
| Commission studios (us) | 5–7 weeks | Layered painting, mock-up, two progress checks, varnish, certificate |
| Independent fine artists | 8–12+ weeks | Genuine gallery work — worth it, if the date allows |
The starred row is where we sit. The rows above it are faster because less is happening; the row below is slower because much more is.
Planning for a gift or event deadline
Work backwards from the date it must be on the wall, and add a buffer for framing (a local framer typically needs a few days to stretch and frame a rolled canvas):
- Order 8 weeks before the date. That covers the full timeline plus stretching, with a week of slack.
- Six weeks out is still comfortable — tell us the date when you enquire and we will confirm an honest schedule before you pay anything.
- Under four weeks: say so up front. If a rush commission plus express shipping can make it, we will say yes and hold the calendar. If it cannot, we will tell you — before you pay, not after.
- Never trust a studio that says yes to everything. A promise that ignores drying time is a promise about a print.
The honest summary
A real oil painting is one of the slower things you can buy online, and one of the few that will outlive the sofa it hangs above. Five to seven weeks is the honest number. Budget it once, and you never have to think about it again — the painting will still be on that wall when the hallway has been repainted twice.