Office Art Commissions: How Artists Land High-End Corporate Art Deals

How This Artist Creates Commissions that Collectors Love 32:02

One office commission can be worth a year of selling paintings one at a time. A business with ten blank walls and a move-in date buys differently from a collector at an art fair. Once you know how that buyer thinks, the pitch gets much easier.

Who buys high-end office art?

The person who owns the project budget buys it. At a small business, that’s usually the owner. A large company doesn’t want to manage a dozen separate artists. So it hires an interior designer, an art consultant or a facilities manager to do it.

Each of them is worried about something different:

• The small business owner is spending money that would otherwise go home with them at the end of the month. Expect them to weigh it personally and carefully.
• The art consultant or designer is risking their reputation. If you’re late or flaky, they look bad to their client. Your job is to make them look great so they bring you onto the next project.

Offices are only one market. Hospitals, banks, restaurants, senior living buildings and new apartment builds all have walls and customers. (If hotels interest you, we’ve written a separate guide on how to sell art to hotels.)

Why would a business pay for original art?

A business buys art when it makes the space feel worth the price, or when it helps the business earn more. Every part of your pitch should connect back to one of those two reasons.

People feel the price of a room before they can explain it. An owner’s real fear is that a customer walks in and, within ten seconds, decides the place feels unfinished or cheap. A law firm that charges premium rates can’t have clients walking past bare walls to the conference room.

For a boutique rental or a small hotel, the pitch can be one question: would you rather attract guests who pay $100 a night or $1,000 a night? The texture of an original painting is the kind of detail that shows up in a five-star review.

Employers have a second reason: the people who work there. A University of Exeter study (Knight and Haslam, 2010) compared bare offices with offices decorated with plants and art. People did better and felt better in the decorated offices. They did better still when they had a say in how the space was decorated.

That last finding gives you a pitch move when the buyer is an employer. Let the people who work there choose between two or three directions before you paint. You’re giving them a say, which is exactly what the study found helps.

Where do you find businesses that need office art?

Look for businesses that are about to have new walls. Companies buy art on project timelines, so timing matters as much as fit. The same owner who ignores you in March may need twelve paintings in June because they just signed a new lease.

Watch for these signals:

1. Construction and renovations in your area, like construction fencing or a building permit posted in a window.
2. Grand openings, moves and new locations in the local news.
3. Rebrands, which often come with a new space or a redesign.
4. Chamber of commerce meetings, where owners talk about what’s next.
5. Local interior designers’ social media, where they post the projects they’re working on.

Designers are worth the most time. Follow them, comment on their projects and show genuine interest in what they make. When a project comes up that fits your style, you want to be the artist they already know. LinkedIn is useful here too, because most businesses and designers keep a profile there.

You can also go after a market you’re already part of. Take a realtor. Every time they close on a house, you paint something from that home as their gift to the buyer. If you know dentists, vets or law offices from the inside, start there.

How do you pitch an office art commission?

Open with their problem, then make it effortless for them to picture your art on their walls. Here’s the process we teach in the Mastery Program, our training for artists building a career:

1. Name the problem you solve. An owner may worry their space feels cheap or unfinished. A designer needs an artist who delivers in the client’s style, on time and on budget. For a designer, reliability is what you’re selling.
2. Let a past client say what you can’t. Telling an owner their space feels cheap will sink you. Instead, share what a past client said about their space before and after your art went up. (Only if a client really said it.)
3. Mock up your art on their walls. Take photos of their space, or use the photos on their Google listing. Then drop your paintings onto the walls at true size in a photo editor. Show two or three arrangements.
4. Make the presentation look like theirs. Use their colors, logo and fonts so it feels like their own design team put it together.
5. Reach them more than one way. Email, call, appear in their social feed and meet in person if you can.
6. Expect silence, and ask again. Plenty of beautiful presentations get no reply, and that’s normal with businesses. Keep asking, because one yes can be worth months of sales.

What kind of art works on office walls?

Art that lots of different people can find their own meaning in. Employees, clients and visitors walk past an office painting every day. A painting packed with symbols only you can decode makes them feel left out.

The trap is illustrating a sentence. Say a company values freedom, and your first idea is an eagle. Think of your ideas as bus stops: that eagle is only the first stop, and you should stay on the bus. A field of wildflowers nobody planted is the next stop. A glowing blue eagle at night, looking down into a pool of water, is the one after that. Each stop is less obvious, so more people can bring their own story to it.

A consistent style makes all of this easier. When a client can already see what you paint, they’re ordering more of what they love, adjusted for their walls and colors. You’ll spend far less time on revisions.

How do you price a high-end office commission?

Price it as a package, a little above your normal rates, and never discount it. Custom art takes extra time and back-and-forth, so charge for that. One of our instructors prices her originals at $7 a square inch and her commissions at $8. Your rates will be different; the markup is the point.

A package turns one sale into a big one. Say your typical painting is 30 by 30 inches. That’s 900 square inches, so at $1 a square inch it sells for $900. Ten originals for one office becomes a $9,000 package, sold once instead of to ten separate buyers.

A few pricing rules that matter more with businesses:

• Offer three sizes of package. Make the biggest one several times the price of the middle one. It makes the middle package look reasonable, and now and then somebody buys the big one.
• Use whole numbers. $9,000 reads premium. $8,999.99 reads like a sale rack.
• Remove pieces, never cut the price. If they push back, take a painting out of the package. A discount tells them your price wasn’t firm.
• Charge separately for image rights. Owning the painting doesn’t give them the right to print it on brochures, their website or ads. That’s a license, and it costs more.

For the math on a single piece, see our guide on how to price art commissions.

What should an office commission contract include?

Everything you agreed to, in writing, before you start. This isn’t legal advice, so have a lawyer review anything large. At minimum, cover these:

1. The deposit. Take 15 to 20 percent upfront, and make it non-refundable.
2. The payment schedule. Write down when each payment is due, and never deliver a painting before it’s paid for.
3. Image rights. State that they own the painting but not the right to reproduce the image unless they buy a license.
4. The timeline. Two to three months is a comfortable range for most commissions.
5. Check-ins. Agree on when they’ll see progress: the reference photo or sketch you’ll paint from, a messy middle stage, then the painting at about 90 percent.

If you’re installing pieces on site, carry insurance. A client who knows a scuffed wall or a dropped frame is covered says yes faster. Our art commission contract guide walks through each clause.

How long does a corporate art commission take?

Weeks to months. The bigger the company, the more people need to approve the purchase and the more meetings it takes. A small business owner who decides alone can move in days.

That’s slower than selling a painting at a booth, and it takes far more effort per pitch. The trade is size: selling to collectors takes many small sales to fill a year, and one business deal can do it on its own.

Is selling art to businesses right for you?

It suits artists who already understand how a business thinks. Maybe you waited tables, ran a front desk or spent ten years in an office. Then you know what that owner worries about, and you can speak their language.

If you’ve never worked inside a business, you can still do this. Expect more trial and error, and get curious about the people you’re pitching.

Start with a short list of the businesses you understand best, and write down what each one would gain from your art. Then go find the one that’s about to get new walls.

If you’ve never taken a commission at all, set up your commission page, order form and process first. Our guide on how to set up art commissions walks you through it, so you’re ready when the first yes comes in.

Frequently asked questions

How do artists get corporate art commissions?

Watch for businesses that are building, moving, renovating or rebranding, because companies buy art on project timelines. Then reach the person who owns the budget: the owner of a small business, or the interior designer or art consultant who manages a larger project. Pitch the problem your art solves for them, show it mocked up on their walls and follow up more than once.

Who buys art for offices?

At a small business, the owner usually decides and pays. Larger companies rarely hire individual artists directly, so they hand the job to an interior designer, an art consultant or a facilities manager, and the check comes from whoever owns that project's budget.

How much should you charge for an office art commission?

Charge a little more than your regular originals, because custom art takes extra time. For a whole office, offer a package of several originals at one whole-number price, and add a fee if the business wants to use the image in its marketing. Never discount; if they need a lower price, remove pieces from the package.

Does art in the office make employees more productive?

A 2010 study from the University of Exeter found that people worked better and felt better in offices decorated with plants and art than in bare ones, and did better still when they had a say in the decoration. It's a fair point to bring to an employer, as long as you describe it accurately.

How long does a corporate art commission take to close?

Weeks to months. The bigger the company, the more people need to approve it, so expect several meetings. A small business owner who decides alone can say yes much faster.