Worked Numbers
How to Price Resin Art: Cost to Make, Price per Square Inch
To price resin art, work out the resin the pour needs from its length, width and depth, cost that resin and everything else in the piece, add your hours at an hourly floor your year needs, then add a margin. In the illustrative 24 by 18 inch panel below, materials are $59.00, the maker’s time is $163.52, the piece costs $222.52 to make, and a 25% margin prices it at $296.69, or $0.69 a square inch.
Every figure here belongs to one made-up maker. The volume conversion, mix ratio, layer depth and cure time are that maker’s label figures; use your own resin maker’s label, and mix, pour and cure only as it directs. None of the prices are market prices.
The resin art pricing formula
resin to mix = length x width x depth / cubic inches per fl oz
/ (1 - waste share)
materials = whole ounces x kit price per ounce
+ pigment + panel + consumables + hardware + edge
cost to make = hours x hourly floor + materials
price = cost to make / (1 - margin)
price per sq in = price / (length x width)
Step 1: your hourly floor
The example maker wants $30,000 a year kept after a 20% tax set-aside and carries $6,000 of business costs: torch, heat gun, scale, molds, website. That is $43,500.00 a year. They spend 22 studio hours a week on pieces for 46 weeks, and 8% of those hours go to failed pours, leaving 931.04 paid hours. The floor is $46.72 per paid studio hour. The 8 unpaid hours a week of photos, listings and packing are paid for through that floor, and spread over every hour worked the maker keeps $21.74 an hour.
Step 2: how much resin the pour needs
A 24 by 18 inch panel is 432 square inches. At 0.125 inches deep that is 54 cubic inches of resin on the piece. The example’s label conversion is 1.805 cubic inches per fluid ounce, so 29.92 ounces stay on the panel. With 10% of mixed resin lost to cup residue, drips and edges, the maker mixes 33.24 ounces: 16.62 of each part at the label’s 1 to 1 ratio by volume, measured out as 34 whole ounces. The pour depth is within the 0.125 inch deepest layer on the example’s label, so it is one pour.
Step 3: how much it costs to make resin art
The resin kit cost $112.00 for 128 ounces of part A and part B together, $0.875 an ounce.
| Material | Cost |
|---|---|
| Resin: 34 oz at $0.875 an ounce | $29.75 |
| Pigments, mica and inclusions | $4.50 |
| Panel | $18.00 |
| Cups, sticks, gloves, tape, sheeting | $3.25 |
| Hanging hardware | $2.40 |
| Edge tape or dam, per use | $1.10 |
| Materials for the piece | $59.00 |
Resin is 50% of the materials. The panel is the next biggest line, and the small items, cups, gloves, tape, a share of a mold, are real costs of every pour.
Step 4: the price of the piece
The maker’s own timing is 2 hours to prep and pour and 1.5 hours to sand, finish and hang: 3.5 hours.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Your time, 3.5 hours at $46.72 | $163.52 |
| Materials | $59.00 |
| Cost of the piece | $222.52 |
| Price at a 25% margin | $296.69 |
| Per square inch, 432 sq in | $0.69 |
Rounded up to a whole dollar, $297. The per square inch figure (0.687 before rounding to the cent) is a starting point for a price list across sizes, not a rule: your hours need not shrink in step with the area, so check each size with your own hours for it.
The insight: time costs more than resin, and cure space caps your month
Materials are 19.9% of the price here. The maker’s time, $163.52, is more than twice the $59.00 of materials. Pricing resin art as a multiple of what the resin costs prices the cheap part of the work and guesses at the expensive one.
Cure time is the second limit. The example’s label leaves a piece sitting level for 3 days, so in 30 days each level spot holds 10 pours. With 2 spots that is 20 panels a month, while the maker’s 80 studio hours would allow 22.86. Cure space is the limit, 10 studio hours sit idle, and 3 spots would lift it. Before raising prices or working longer, count your level surfaces.
Wall art or coaster sets?
The example sells sets of 4 coasters at $48.00. At $3.10 of materials per coaster, a set takes $12.40 and 1.25 hours. The wall panel leaves $67.91 per hour after materials; a coaster set leaves $28.48, under the $46.72 floor. The set price that pays the floor is $70.80, and it takes 7 sets to leave what one wall panel leaves after materials. A lower-priced item can still earn its place on a table, as long as you know what it costs you an hour.
Did the market pay?
Say the maker sells 3 panels and 14 coaster sets at a market: $1,562.07. After the materials in what sold, a $85.00 booth fee, $15.00 of bags and signs, $24.80 of driving and a 3% card fee, $1,039.81 is left. That has to pay 28 hours of making and 9 hours at the market, 37 hours in all, so it comes to $28.10 an hour, below the $46.72 floor. Those same pieces would have needed to sell for $2,272.21 to pay it. The panels were priced with a margin; the coaster sets and the market day pulled the hour down.
Did this piece pay?
A commission sold at $350.00 took 5.25 hours, longer than the estimate, and used $64.20 of materials, more than planned. After $28.00 of postage and a 3% fee it leaves $247.30, or $47.10 an hour against the $46.72 floor. It clears, with $2.08 to spare: the price that pays exactly the floor on those hours was $347.92. Logging real hours and materials against the estimate is how the next price gets closer.
How these were calculated
Resin on the piece is length x width x depth over the label’s cubic inches per fluid ounce; ounces to mix divide that by (1 minus the waste share), and are split into parts by the label’s ratio. Materials cost the whole ounces measured out at the kit’s price per ounce, plus each other item. The floor is income over (1 minus the tax set-aside), plus business costs, over studio hours x (1 minus the lost share) x weeks. Price is (hours x floor + materials) / (1 minus margin), the margin being profit as a share of the price; the markup vs margin chart shows how that differs from a markup. Monthly capacity is the lower of cure cycles x level spots and studio hours over hours per piece. Figures carried from one step to the next are carried as a spreadsheet shows them, to the cent. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that measures each part separately, counts cure cycles pour by pour and totals market sales item by item, and the two agree. All inputs are illustrative, not market prices, measured times or resin handling or safety advice. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice. The candle pricing calculator works the same method for another poured craft.
To run this on your own label, receipts and hours, the pack below has eight calculators, from the hourly floor to whether a finished piece paid.