How to choose the style of your oil portrait

Style is the first thing buyers want to decide and, in practice, the last thing that changes the invoice. Here is what each of our four house styles really looks like from across a room, what each one demands from your photograph, how style and canvas size are tied together, and what style never changes about the price.

Style is a decision about the wall, not about the photograph

Almost every enquiry opens the same way: which style will look most like her? It is the wrong first question, because likeness is set by the reference photograph and by how many square inches of canvas the face actually gets — not by whether the brushwork is tight or loose. Two portraits can be equally recognisable and behave completely differently on a wall, at three metres, and in twenty years when the room around them has been repainted twice.

So the honest order of decisions runs: which photograph, how large, how many subjects — and then style. Buyers who start with style almost always pick the most finished option available, which is the safest choice and rarely the best one.

The four styles we paint

These are not marketing labels. Each is a different way of building a painting, and each one behaves differently on a wall.

1. Classical realism

A classical head is built in thin layers over a light ground, each layer dried before the next goes down. Nothing about the surface announces the painter’s hand: you see the face, not the brush. The background is usually a deep glazed brown or near-black, and that ground does real work — against a dark field a lit face gains roughly a stop of apparent contrast, which is why a portrait that would look flat above a pale wall suddenly reads as lit from within.

The trade-off is time: a tightly worked head needs about a week longer, because thin layers cannot be hurried. It also asks the most of your photograph, so a classical treatment of a 400-pixel face wastes the style and the money. A single subject at 16 × 20 in is $389, the size where this style behaves best.

2. Warm realism — the default, and why

This is what most people picture when they hear “commissioned oil portrait”: recognisably a person rather than a photograph. The face is resolved carefully — eyes sharpest, highlights along the nose and lips kept crisp — while hair, clothing and background are painted loosely, with visible strokes. Painters call that contrast edge control, and it is why a good portrait looks alive rather than frozen: the eye is led to the face and given somewhere quiet to rest everywhere else.

It is also the most forgiving style. Because the clothing and ground are loose, a slightly soft photograph or a cluttered living room simply disappear.

3. Impressionist and painterly

Loose painting is not under-painting and it is not a shortcut. A painterly portrait takes the same three to five weeks as a tight one; the difference is that every mark is a decision that cannot be quietly blended away afterwards. Broken colour — separate strokes of warm and cool side by side — is what makes a canvas seem to move as you walk past it, because the eye mixes the strokes at a distance instead of the brush.

It suits larger canvases, and it is the honest answer for three briefs: a garden behind the sitter; a seated group where a fussy background would compete with the faces; and any canvas from 24 × 36 in ($789 with one subject) upward, where a tight finish costs weeks more for detail nobody sees from three metres. It also suits a photograph that is charming rather than sharp.

4. Contemporary and graphic

Here the background is not a scene at all. It is a flat field, a blocked band of colour, or a soft gradient built from two or three tones, and the figure is painted with a strong silhouette and very little interior detail. The result belongs in a room with clean lines and no ornament, and it photographs well because nothing busy is competing for attention.

Two notes. It lives or dies on contrast in your photograph — a flatly lit image produces a flat painting. And it is where buyers most often name a background colour; send a photograph of the wall instead.

What each style demands from your photograph

The rule is simple: the looser the style, the less the photograph has to explain.

What no style can repair is a face turned away from the lens, genuinely blurred, or lit identically from both sides so it has no shape. Our guide to choosing reference photos covers this in detail.

The background is half the style

Buyers choose a style and then forget that the ground behind the sitter is where most of the difference lives. Four options cover nearly everything we paint:

• A dark glazed ground — near-black brown or olive. The classical answer and the strongest lift for a lit face, but it needs a wall that can take a dark rectangle.
• A soft tonal vignette — the studio default. The painting settles into the wall rather than shouting off it.
• A landscape or interior — the most forgiving ground for a commission built from separate photographs, because the setting is invented to match. Ask for it in the quote: a full architectural scene is priced as an addition.
• A flat colour field — contemporary. Choose the tone from a photograph of the room, and keep it two steps quieter in value than the face.

Style and size are linked more than buyers expect

A one-inch brush stroke on a two-inch face is not a style, it is a mess. That explains why certain pairings recur, and why we sometimes recommend a style other than the one you asked for:

• 8 × 10 in ($189) — the face lands about 1.5 in across. Classical realism or a graphic treatment only.
• 12 × 16 in ($289 / $379) — classical realism at its best, and the smallest size where two faces stay separate.
• 16 × 20 in ($389 / $499 / $619) — the studio’s most-bought size and the safest home for warm realism.
• 20 × 24 in ($549 / $699 / $849) — where painterly brushwork starts to pay off.
• 24 × 36 in ($789 / $1,059 / $1,290) — impressionist and graphic territory; a tight finish here is weeks of work for detail nobody sees from the sofa.
• 30 × 40 in and up ($1,090 / $1,449 / $1,749) — a room decision as much as a portrait.

Still deciding on size before style? The arithmetic for furniture, eye level and wall width is in our wall-art sizing guide.

What style never changes

Style is not a line item on a quote. A 16 × 20 in canvas with one subject costs $389 whether it is tightly finished or loosely painted, because the price comes from size and subject count, not from how the paint is handled. The mock-up you approve before we paint, the first revision on the finished canvas, progress photographs and worldwide tracked shipping are included whichever style you choose. The full table is on the custom portraits page.

Two things do cost more, and both are work rather than taste: restoration or compositing of old and separate photographs ($60–$70), and rush delivery at $90, which brings a painting into a three-week window including painting time.

Three questions that decide it faster than a gallery visit

1. Where will it hang, and what colour is that wall? A dark classical ground vanishes against a dark wall; a loose canvas needs clear wall around it to breathe.
2. Who is it for? A gift for a parent or grandparent lands best in warm realism. A self-purchase for a modern flat often reads better as graphic.
3. What do you want to be true in twenty years? A face never dates; a treatment sometimes does. Tight classical finishes carry a period feel, loose painterly ones age with the room.

Three style myths worth dropping

• “Photo-real is the goal.” A photograph is one hour of light recorded chemically; a painting is a decision about that hour.
• “Painterly means unfinished.” It means the marks were left visible on purpose, after more planning rather than less.
• “A digital filter counts as a style.” A filter leaves no texture and cannot build an edge between a cheek and its shadow. Our oil versus canvas print guide settles that in under a minute.

How to brief a style in one email

1. Send two paintings you like and say what you like about each — the colour, the looseness, the background. Our portrait gallery is a good list to react to.
2. Send one photograph of the room if you know where it will hang. Wall colour, light and furniture say more about style than adjectives do.
3. Send your best three photographs and one sentence about the person. We will say honestly what the source can support before anything is charged.

The short version

• Style is decided after photograph, size and subject count — not before.
• Warm realism is the default because it forgives everything except a bad photograph.
• Style never changes the price. Size and subject count do.

If you would rather be told which style suits your photograph, send it to [email protected] with a note about where the painting will hang, and you will get a size recommendation, a fixed price and an honest verdict on the source — usually within 24 hours. Nothing is charged until you approve all three. Ready-made canvases are in the original paintings collection, and the whole process from first email to doorstep is on the how it works page.