Charged a friend ₹4,000 for a house portrait, then saw the same size go for ₹18,000
A college friend asked me to paint her parents' house in Malleswaram before they sell it. Old tile roof, that green gate, the whole thing. I said four thousand. In my head I was being generous because we go back eighteen years and she's been kind to me.
It took me four sittings on location plus two days finishing at home. Paper, the travel, the auto fares, and I redid the roof twice because the light changed and I got stubborn about it.
Last week I was at a group show and a painter I know, roughly my level, nothing fancy, was quoting eighteen thousand for the same size house portrait. Same paper. Same city. Same kind of work.
I'm not angry at her. I'm angry that I did the sum in my head as "what would she be comfortable paying" and not "what is this worth." Thirty-odd hours of my life went into that painting and I priced it like a favour, which it wasn't, because a favour is something you give free.
The thing is I have three more enquiries waiting and I don't know if I can say twelve thousand out loud without my voice doing something strange. That number feels made up. It isn't, obviously. It's just that I've been undercharging for so long that the correct price sounds like a lie.
2
2commentsSaveFollow threadShare
The pricing gap isn't the real problem. Six sittings on location for four grand works out to less than the auto fare per hour, and you redid the roof twice on your own time. That's the thing that'll kill you, not what she paid.
Here's the part people skip: the number you say out loud is the number you set for everyone after. Friends get a discount, fine. But if you quote four for a house, the next stranger who asks has a reference point and it's not eighteen.
I've done this. Quoted low to someone I liked, then spent three weeks resenting the piece while I was cutting it. Bad trade. Better to give the friend a gift and charge the market, or charge the market and let her decide. Mixing the two is how you end up doing six sittings for nothing and feeling sour about a friend of eighteen years.
You've caught the right thing and it stings a bit. The four thousand isn't what's sitting badly. It's that I spent six sittings and a whole evening's worth of roof, and somewhere in the fourth sitting I was already tired of the piece. That's the part I didn't want to look at.
And the reference point thing is exactly it. Two people have already asked "same rate na?" since. I said yes both times because what do I say now, sorry that was a friend price? Which is a mess I made myself.
So what do you do with the ones already in the queue at the low number? Do you finish them at four and fix it from the next one, or do you have the awkward conversation and raise it now?