How to price archviz images

The short answer

Work out your studio's hourly cost first. Then estimate the job in two parts: the scene work shared by every view (modelling the building, the site, materials), and the work per view (camera, lighting, entourage, post, the included feedback rounds). Split the shared part across the views, add each view's own hours, add freelancer costs and a margin, and round to a price per image. Quote a separate price for an extra round and for design changes.

I will not give you market prices per image. They vary by a factor of ten between countries and client types, and a number from someone else's market tells you nothing about whether your job makes money. Your hours and your rate do.

Step 1: know your hourly cost

Before any image, you need the number an hour of studio time has to bring in. For a solo artist that is the income you need divided by the hours you can actually bill, which is far fewer than the hours you work. For a studio it is salaries, rent, software, hardware, render costs and your own pay, divided by the billable hours of everyone who produces images.

The day rate calculator works this out from a target income, and the hourly rate calculator from a salary you want to match. Use the result as the cost of an hour, not the price of one.

Step 2: separate shared work from per-view work

This is where most archviz quotes go wrong. The building model, the site, the landscape and the material library are built once and used by every view. If you price each view as if it carried all of that, a ten-view job looks absurdly expensive. If you price each view as if none of it existed, a one-view job loses money.

So estimate the two parts separately.

Shared scene work:

• Modelling the building from the architect's files, or cleaning up their model
• Site, context buildings, terrain and landscape
• The material set from the finishes schedule
• Test renders to set the look

Per-view work:

• Camera, composition and the camera approval round
• Lighting and time of day for that view
• Entourage: people, cars, furniture dressing
• Rendering, then post-production
• The feedback rounds included in the quote

Step 3: a worked example

A residential building, four views: an aerial, a street-level exterior, the lobby and a show apartment living room. These numbers are an example of the method, not a benchmark.

The scene work is split by how much of it each view uses: the exteriors use the building and the site, the interiors mostly do not. Interiors carry their own modelling and dressing in their own hours instead.

At an hourly cost of 60.00, the job costs 4,800.00 in studio time. Add a freelancer modelling the furniture set for 600.00, so 5,400.00. A 25% margin gives 6,750.00, which as prices per image might be 1,700.00 for the aerial, 1,850.00 for the street view and 1,600.00 for each interior. Round to numbers you are comfortable saying out loud.

Step 4: price the extras before anyone asks

Put three prices in the quote that you hope not to use:

• An extra feedback round per view, priced at the hours a typical round takes you times your hourly cost plus margin.
• A design change, priced as an hourly rate or quoted on request. A changed facade is not a feedback round.
• Rush delivery, as a percentage on top, if you take that kind of job at all.

Having these written down turns the round-three conversation into a line on an invoice rather than a negotiation. The guide on client feedback rounds in an archviz studio covers when and how to raise it.

Step 5: animations and extra formats

Animations are usually priced per second of finished film or per shot, using the same split: the shared scene is already built for the stills, and each shot adds camera path, animated entourage, render time and post. A 30-second flythrough that reuses the still scene costs far less than one built from scratch, and the quote should show that, because the client will compare it with a quote that does not.

Extra crops, sizes or a version without people are small per-view lines. Price them; do not throw them in, because they become expected on the next job.

Render time, hardware and the cost of waiting

Two costs hide outside the hours. The first is rendering: if you use a render farm, its cost per frame or per image belongs on the job like a freelancer's fee; if you render locally, your hardware is already in your hourly cost, but a long animation can tie up your machines for days, and those days have a cost too. The second is waiting. A job where the architect takes two weeks to send the cameras back still needs your attention every few days. If a client is known for slow replies, add the hours for that rather than hoping this time is different.

Step 6: write the quote per view

Each view gets its own line with a quantity of one and its price. The included rounds, the extra round price and the change rate go in the notes. The client can then remove a view without asking you to re-quote, which they will try anyway. The quote template does this layout.

Doing this in OIO

In OIO the quote's lines carry a quantity, a unit and a price, so "1 x aerial view" and "4 x interior" read the way the client checks them, in any currency. The views become tickets on the same project. Freelancer costs go on the project in their currency at the day's rate, and the project page shows the budget against what has been invoiced and paid. Hours on a ticket are entered by hand; there is no timer. More on OIO for archviz studios.

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