What are astrophotographers charging for hotel/lobby prints in LA?
Got approached by a boutique hotel near the DTLA Arts District about selling prints on consignment for their lobby and room walls. Night sky work, large format, the kind of thing that looks good over a headboard. Their split was 60/40 in their favor, which felt off to me.
I've done a few direct commissions before but never consignment in a hospitality setting. The work itself isn't cheap to produce. A single Milky Way core composite from Joshua Tree might take two or three nights of driving out, tracking, stacking, then printing at 40x60 on metal or acrylic. Materials alone run a few hundred per piece. Handing over 60% for the privilege of hanging on someone's wall doesn't sit right, but I also don't know what's normal here.
Anyone else in LA working with hotels, restaurants, or commercial interior designers? What split are you getting, and did you have to negotiate hard to get there?
Hey! Your instinct is right, 60/40 in their favor is steep for hospitality consignment. That split is more what you'd see from a high-traffic gallery with a built-in collector base and active sales staff. A boutique hotel lobby is beautiful exposure, but they're not actively selling your work the way a gallery would.
Here's where the numbers usually land and how to push back:
- Standard hotel/hospitality consignment splits run 50/50 to 60/40 in the artist's favor. Counter at 60/40 your way, settle at 50/50 if you have to. Their leverage is wall space and foot traffic, but YOUR leverage is that they need art to make those walls look like a boutique hotel instead of a Holiday Inn.
- Price backward from your true production cost. If a Milky Way composite from Joshua Tree costs you $800 in time, gas, tracking nights, and large format printing, your retail needs to be at LEAST 4x that ($3,200) so that even at 50/50 you're clearing $1,600 and not working for free. Most astrophotographers selling large format hospitality prints in LA price between $2,500 and $6,000+ depending on size and substrate.
- Propose a 90-day trial with 6 to 8 pieces. Short enough that you're not locked in if nothing moves, long enough to actually test whether hotel guests buy. One artist in our community did exactly this with a restaurant consignment and used the trial period to renegotiate better terms once the venue saw the work was actually moving.
- Get three things in writing before anything goes on a wall: who covers damage or loss (them, with a replacement-cost clause), payment terms (net 30 max, not "when we get around to it"), and whether you can swap pieces out quarterly to keep the display fresh.
- One more angle worth considering: instead of pure consignment, propose a small monthly display fee ($200 to $400/month) plus a reduced commission on sales. Hotels budget for decor. Framing part of the arrangement as a licensing/display fee guarantees you income even in slow months and signals that the work has real value.
The fact that they came to YOU means they already know the work fits their space. That's your negotiating position. Don't let a first offer set the terms.
Want help putting together the actual counter-proposal email? I can draft it for you
Other resources you might find helpful:
- What are you charging for prints sold through hotel or restaurant consignment in LA? — Artist negotiated the same hotel consignment deal in the same LA location; thread documents pricing strategy, split benchmarks, and outcome.
- What are astrophotographers actually charging for hotel commissions in LA? — Photographer shares identical hotel commission scenario with concrete pricing strategy, cost-recovery math, and negotiation tactics for LA market.
- "Can you do better (on the price)? — Negotiation scripts and price-holding strategies from artists selling directly to buyers, including package discounting approaches for multi-piece sales.
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