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did a mural last month for a cafe, 2400 flat. felt like a bag at the time, biggest single number anyone's handed me for paint. then i actually added it up. two days of prep and priming, four days on the wall, one day sealing and touch ups. seven days at like ten hours because you can't exactly stop halfway up a ladder. so 70 hours. minus 380 in paint and rollers and the sealer and the lift rental, minus parking in that neighborhood which was somehow 90 bucks. came out to like 27 an hour. my old design gig was 45 and i didn't have to breathe fumes for it. i was so happy when they said yes to 2400 that i didn't blink. that's the part that gets me. i underbid myself by being relieved. and the mural's nice, genuinely, so now i'm the guy who does murals for 2400. anyway if you're in the same boat the tell is this, you get a number and you feel relief instead of doing math. that's not a yes, that's a flinch.

three 24x36 acrylics for a small restaurant, $350 total, which is already embarrassing when i think about it. they loved them. framed them nice, hung them where people actually see them. then the owner asked if i'd paint a mural on the patio wall "in exchange for the visibility" and i caught myself going "yeah sure" in my head before my body caught up. visibility doesn't pay my rent, karen. it pays in likes from people who will also want a discount. did the math on the original three after the fact: about 14 hours each including sketches and the two repaints because they wanted the napkins color-matched to the wall. so $8.33 an hour. an hour. i could have just worked at the restaurant and the paintings would've been free. i said yes to the mural anyway. negotiating $200 and the owner looked hurt, like i'd asked them to donate a kidney. why is it always the people with the least money who are most offended when you ask to be paid for your time. i don't know if this is a pricing vent or a confession but it's both. next time i'm charging hourly upfront and i will simply endure the awkward silence.

painted a 9-foot mural for a coffee shop last spring. quoted $1,800 flat because it was a friend of a friend and i wanted the wall space for photos. took me eleven days including the sketching, the scaffolding rental i paid out of pocket, and the two touch-up visits after they knocked a chair into it. worked out to $4.60 an hour after materials. my neighbor's teenager makes more babysitting. the worst part is i'd probably do it again because the photos got me two commissions that actually paid. so i guess the real price was the exposure but i hate saying that out loud because it's the thing i make fun of other artists for believing in lol

Anyone here calculate Hourly/Daily rate? What is the Average Hourly rate for Murals?

got the email again. "we'd love you to paint a mural for our new cafe, no budget right now but it'll be GREAT exposure and so many people will see it." the last three "exposure" jobs got me exactly zero paying clients and a sore back. exposure does not pay for a single tube of cadmium red. i decided this was the year i learned to say no and apparently the universe is testing me on day one

Took a commission I almost turned down. A cafe owner in Ano Poli wanted a mosaic wall behind the counter, but he had no budget to speak of and kept saying "you know, something Greek." Which usually means he's picturing Parthenon columns or a blue-flag beach, and I've spent twenty years trying not to make those. I went anyway because the space was good, low light, and he let me bring a couple of test panels. I brought smalti and some broken terracotta from a demo site, did a sample that used the actual colors of the street outside instead of the postcard palette. Half expected him to say no. He said yes, and then he let me do whatever I wanted. No moodboards, no "can you make the fish bigger." Three weeks on my knees but I got to make the thing I wanted to make and somebody paid me for it. It's up there now, people photograph it with their coffee. I'm still surprised when that happens. Twenty years in and it still surprises me. The good kind of surprise, the kind that keeps you doing it.

i spent years telling myself "exposure" was a scam word and mostly i still think that. but last fall i did a mural for a coffee shop that paid me in store credit and i was so broke i said yes just to eat for a month. dudes at the counter every morning, one of them turned out to be an art director for a local agency and he asked who painted the wall. that one conversation led to a real paying gig and the coffee shop is still free for me. so the takeaway is not "exposure works." the takeaway is "sometimes a shitty deal puts you physically in front of the right person," which is not a strategy, it's luck with extra steps. i still tell everyone who asks to get paid in cash. but i also can't fully pretend the free coffee mural was a mistake lol. hate that this is true.

omg you guys i just sent over a quote for a huge mural commission, like WAY bigger than anything i've done before, and i'm sitting here doing the math again and again and honestly my brain is fried. i did the hourly rate calculation i always use, plus material costs which were INSANE for this much paint, but then i added like a 10% 'stress tax' because the thought of executing this on-site is making me sweat. i think i priced it fairly for the scope and my time, but what if they balk? what if they think i'm totally out of my mind? i'm so used to quoting smaller pieces that this feels like a whole new universe. has anyone else ever felt this level of sheer terror after hitting 'send' on a big quote?