Pricing Your Work When You Don’t Know Where to Start

There’s a moment that sneaks up on you as a small business owner. Maybe you’re sitting at your desk, reviewing a project you’re proud of, or staring at a piece that still feels half-formed. You’ve poured yourself into it. And now comes the question that somehow always feels heavier than it should:

What do I charge for this?

If you’ve been here (maybe more than once), you’re not alone. And if you’ve felt a little frozen at that starting line, not because you’re unsure of your work, but because you don’t have the context to price it with confidence, that’s completely valid. This post is for you.

We’re not talking formulas or feel-good pricing mantras. We’re talking about what to do when you genuinely don’t know where to begin.

Why Pricing Feels So Hard at the Beginning

If pricing feels impossible, it’s probably not because you’re inexperienced. It’s because you’re working without a map. The interiors world doesn’t exactly post its price tags in the window.

Unlike other industries, where rates and ranges are often easy to find, pricing in interiors tends to live in private conversations, custom quotes, or under layers of “by request” forms. So if you’re feeling like you’re guessing, it’s probably because you are. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because no one’s shown you what “right” might look like yet.

The Problem with Invisible Pricing

Let’s just say it: a lot of interior market pricing lives behind closed doors as NDAs, custom projects, and handshake agreements that don’t show up in search results. That kind of opacity makes it especially tough for emerging designers or artists breaking into the trade. Without reference points, how do you know if you're aiming too high? Or pricing yourself so low that it quietly reshapes how your work is perceived?

You’re not imagining it. The lack of transparency is real. And it’s not your fault.

Why Guidance Matters More Than Guesswork

No one is born knowing how to price custom work for the interiors world. It’s not instinct. It’s exposure. It’s learning through conversations, through shared knowledge, through watching how others do it. Sometimes it just means asking someone who’s been there before.

This doesn’t mean outsourcing your pricing decisions. It just means you don’t have to invent every answer from scratch. When you’re stuck, a single conversation with someone who’s walked this road can be the thing that helps you move forward. Not because they tell you what to charge, but because they help you start thinking in a new way.

Learning from the Designers You Admire

You don’t need a cheat sheet, you need a lens. Start with the people whose work you admire. The designers whose aesthetic feels aligned with yours, or whose business model you respect.

Look at how their work is positioned. Who are they marketing to? What kinds of materials are they using? Where and how is their work being sold? These things offer clues, not about what you should charge necessarily, but about where your work might sit within the landscape.

It’s not about copying, it’s about learning to read the room.

Getting Anchored: You Need Real Data, Not Just Gut Feelings

We all want our pricing to reflect the value of our work. But “charge your worth” doesn’t mean much when you’re floating without anchors.

What actually helps is information. Real-world numbers, market context, and a better understanding of what clients in the interiors world are used to seeing. That includes knowing what others in your space are charging, what buyers expect to pay for similar work, and how different pricing models actually play out in real life.

That’s where resources like the Interiors Pricing Playbook can be genuinely helpful. It offers real examples and formulas for pricing artwork specifically for the interiors market, so you’re not stuck reinventing the wheel or relying on guesswork.

And once your work starts selling, you’ll start to gather your own data: your own patterns, your own benchmarks. But you don’t have to wait for that to begin building clarity and confidence now.

You’re Not Behind, You’re Just Beginning

If pricing feels heavy, you’re not doing it wrong. You’re simply navigating something most people don’t talk enough about. The good news? You don’t have to go it alone. Clarity doesn’t come from guessing. It comes from exposure, from asking questions, from seeing how others have done it and choosing what feels right for you.

So if you’re standing at the edge of a pricing decision and feeling unsure, maybe just start with one small step. Ask a peer. Study someone you admire. Or explore a resource like the Playbook that’s built to guide you through this. You’re right where you need to be, asking good questions and moving forward, one step at a time.

If this post helped ease some of the pressure around pricing, you might like what we share in the newsletter too. It’s where we talk through these kinds of questions regularly with a focus on practical advice, honest perspective, and the real pace of building something thoughtful and sustainable.

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