Restaurant art
Paintings for a restaurant interior
For a room that will be full of people, steam and low light by eight in the evening, and cleaned by somebody with a cloth at midnight.
A restaurant is the hardest small-scale environment a painting ever lives in: hot, greasy, steamy, lit warm for eighteen hours, and wiped over by people in a hurry. Most of what goes wrong with restaurant art is not aesthetic. It is a canvas hung beside the pass vent, a carved frame that collects grease in its corners, a colour chosen in daylight that turns olive under the room's lamps.
So the first useful question is not what the painting should be, but exactly where it will hang and what the wall is like. Lime plaster behind a banquette is a different problem from brick in a bar or a glazed partition in a dining room. Send photographs of the wall at service time, lights on, room as it actually looks, and the rest of the decisions become much easier to make.
Walls that have been cooked in
Kitchens and dining rooms carry a film of vaporised fat that settles on everything, paint included. A canvas in the same room will collect it, and one near a pass or an extractor will collect it faster. That is not a reason to leave the walls bare; it is a reason to specify a varnish that can be wiped and a frame without crevices. We varnish every painting, and for a working room we use a finish that tolerates a damp cloth.
The wall itself decides how the canvas hangs. New plaster has to be fully dry before anything is fixed to it, and a canvas flat against a damp wall grows mould on the back long before anything shows on the front. Tell us when the wall was last painted. On brick or tile the painting should sit on a batten rather than flush, so air can move behind it and the surface stays dry — a canvas that has spent a year against a damp wall is obvious from the back.
Light at eight in the evening
Restaurant lighting is warm and low, and it does two things: it pushes blues towards green and reds towards orange, and it collapses contrast, so anything painted in close values disappears. A canvas that looks subtle in a north-lit studio can look muddy above a table at dinner. We ask for a photograph of the room with the lights on, and mix against that rather than against the photograph of the subject.
Then there is lunch. A room bright at midday and candlelit at night shows the same painting two different ways, and the honest solution is a composition that works in both: strong shapes, a clear light direction, and no passage that depends on subtlety to read. When you are choosing between two ideas, the bolder one survives the room.
Where it hangs, and what it has to survive
Sightlines first. In a dining room a painting is seen from a table two or three metres away, at the eye level of somebody sitting down, which is around 120 cm to the centre — lower than domestic hanging height. Behind a banquette the centre drops further and the bottom edge has to clear the back of the seat. Above a radiator is the one place we will argue against: the heat cycle dries the canvas from behind and the varnish crazes within a few years.
Size follows the sightline rather than the wall. A 24 × 36 in canvas reads across a small dining room; a long wall in a bar wants either one 36 × 48 in or three 24 × 36 in, and the second is usually better because it survives being partly blocked by people standing at the bar. Anything under 16 × 20 in in a public room effectively disappears.
Durability is not a detail. Canvas on stretcher bars and no glass: glass in a restaurant gathers fingerprints, chips and a reflection of every lamp in the room. A simple moulding rather than an ornate one, because carved corners collect grease and cannot be cleaned without a brush. And a hanging system that a member of staff can straighten in ten seconds, because it will be knocked.
What it costs
Price is set by canvas size and the number of subjects — not by the occasion, the deadline, or how much detail you ask for. The table below is the same one used on every painting page, so there is no quote to wait for.
| Canvas | Metric | 1 subject | 2 subjects | 3 subjects | 4+ subjects |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 × 10 in | 20 × 25 cm | $189 | $259 | — | — |
| 12 × 16 in | 30 × 41 cm | $289 | $379 | $459 | — |
| 16 × 20 in | 41 × 51 cm | $389 | $499 | $619 | $749 |
| 20 × 24 in | 51 × 61 cm | $549 | $699 | $849 | $1,029 |
| 24 × 36 in | 61 × 91 cm | $789 | $1,059 | $1,290 | $1,560 |
| 30 × 40 in | 76 × 102 cm | $1,090 | $1,449 | $1,749 | $2,090 |
| 36 × 48 in | 91 × 122 cm | $1,390 | $1,849 | $2,249 | $2,690 |
Shipping is free worldwide. Framing is optional and quoted separately — most customers have the canvas stretched by a local framer for $60–$120.
How it works
Send the photograph
One sharp phone photo is enough. Tell us the deadline, the wall it is going on, and anything that must or must not be in the picture.
See the mock-up within 24 hours
A digital composite at the exact canvas size and crop, so size and composition are settled before any paint is bought. Nothing is charged until you approve it.
Watch it being painted
Three to five weeks in real oil, with two progress photographs. You can raise a concern at either one — that is what they are for.
Approve, then it ships
You see the finished canvas first, with one free round of adjustments. Then it travels rolled in a rigid tube, tracked and insured, with the numbered certificate inside.
Real oil, not a print
Hand-painted on cotton canvas, varnished, signed. Brushwork you can see in raking light.
You approve before we paint
A digital mock-up at the exact size and crop, within 24 hours, included in the price.
Numbered certificate
Every painting ships with a signed COA stating artist, medium, size and year.
Free worldwide shipping
Rolled in a rigid tube, tracked and insured. No minimum, no distance surcharge.
Questions
Questions we actually get
From $189 for 8 × 10 in, but a public room rarely wants anything smaller than 16 × 20 in at $389. A 24 × 36 in is $789 and a 36 × 48 in is $1,390, with extra subjects added at a fixed rate. Shipping is free worldwide, and a set of two or three canvases is quoted as one order rather than three separate ones.
We can, and we prefer to. Send the paint codes if you have them, or a photograph of the wall and the floor in the room's own light. A palette that fights the interior is the most common reason a restaurant painting gets taken down, and it is decided long before the first brushstroke. A paint chip posted to us beats a screen every time.
Dust with a soft dry brush, then wipe with a damp cloth and a drop of mild soap, drying immediately. No solvents, no glass cleaner, no pressure. The varnish is the barrier that makes this possible, and it can be renewed later by a conservator. Twice a year is enough in a dining room, monthly near a pass.
Three to five weeks of painting plus three to five business days in transit, so six weeks from approval. Rush delivery is three weeks including painting for $90. Openings move, so tell us the date you actually need it on the wall rather than the date on the contractor's schedule — and if it moves again, tell us, because schedules usually improve when we know early.
Yes, and it usually works better than bought-in art. A painting of the first premises, the family who started it, or the street as it was gives a room a reason for the picture on its wall. Send whatever photographs exist, including poor ones — restoration is $60–$70. It is also the thing regulars ask about, which is worth more than any print from a catalogue.
Send photographs of the room
Wall, lighting, ceiling height and where the tables sit. We will propose a size, a subject and a hanging height, with a price before you commit.