One of the funnest parts of sign painting is figuring out how much to charge. I say that without a trace of sarcasm. It’s like a high-stakes puzzle, the stakes being sweat, physical and mental exhaustion, starvation and debt. The reward is everyone’s favorite - cold hard cash. Everything you do is tied into your feelings of self-worth and a run of “no”'s can quickly develop into a negative spiral. Your competition is everyone: the vinyl dudes, AI, your colleagues, the shadow people who are whispering in your client's ear, "hold off for now…"
The summer started out full of promise. There was a consistent stream of jobs leading back to January and it seemed like just as one was wrapping up another was pinging into my inbox. June had nothing confirmed but I was actually relieved because that meant I could take a couple weekends to travel to see family and friends and put some of my pinstriping practice into action. A couple people had hit me up wanting gold leaf so I gave them the run-down and left them with the word “deposit” echoing in their heads. Historically I’m not a hard-sell guy but as I write this I’m starting to think that maybe it’s time to become one.
Two weeks went by. I went to New Mexico, then San Francisco. I still have my 9 to 5 in a government sign shop so I’m good, but I started to wonder if this was the beginning of a dry spell. Ding! A message from a client, asking if it’s okay if they refer someone to me (I always say yes). A nice storefront on Sunset Boulevard wants to update their main sign with something on the windows. Ding! Same day, a client I’ve done work for wants another storefront done similar to the last, this time on Abbot-Kinney in Venice. I must be the luckiest sign painter in LA! Meetings are had, bids are sent. Another week goes by. Nada. Time to circle back.
It seems everyone who hit me up was getting their ducks in a row but something made them hesitate to pull the trigger. What was it? Was it me? Wartime uncertainty? Inflation? It couldn’t be the price; my bids are always ultra fair, and I invariably end up giving them a little extra unbeknownst. Maybe my prices are too low!? If I were in their shoes I might be wary of a number that was less than what I expected, or had heard from other hungry piranhas in the trade. Whatever it was, I needed answers.
Social media, my old frenemy. “Is anyone else experiencing a rash of ghosting?” I asked the void. Oh my god, relief! Everyone who responded was also dealing with this “silent summer” phenomenon. It wasn’t just me. But why??
“Dude, everything is just so expensive now.”
“The war has people scared.”
“The new trade tech grads, they’re underbidding us all!”
Uh oh, some of these factors might be beyond our control.
These days it seems like the only thing keeping up with AI is the amount of people wanting to paint signs. A lot of sign painters gave up soliciting new work five years ago and started offering workshops instead. “In one day you will learn how to use a brush and lay out a sign that will impress and amaze your Instagram followers!” It’s good to expose people to this trade. Don’t let them think they can become a sign painter in one day.
I haven’t heard of any workshops that emphasize selling and pricing. Even SignCraft, a publication worth its weight in 1 Shot, could never perfect how to keep everyone on the same page when it came to charging as much as possible while delivering work that, well… delivers, on the investment. Doc taught everyone in his class pricing “to know how much to charge so you don’t lose money.” There were three main methods with Doc: 1) the Guess and Lose Your Ass Method, ex. “It’s this big and it will probably take this many days so I’ll just charge this.” 2) the Italian Shoe Method, ex. “Judging by the Gucci loafers this guy must be loaded! We’re in the moneyyyyy…” 3) Time and Materials: boring, tedious, reliable. There's software that gives you a fair market price, but in order to get it you still have to answer a list of questions until it spits out a magic number you can confidently tell your customer. Other sign writers have developed their own formulas and immortalized them in Excel spreadsheets that do the same thing. So why is there always such a wide range of prices for the same job? There's one local guy who's been driven mad by this and can't help messaging everyone he sees online, asking them how much they charged for a job he also bid on. The purpose of this essay is to get us together, man, not point the finger.
In the 1920s to the 1950s every trade had a union. Even into the 1970s, but by that time unions were ailing from corruption and legislation that would all but kill them in the Reagan years. According to Syl Ehr, author of Sign Painters Don’t Read Signs, c. 1957, p.57, “... if it's a one-man job, it will cost you from six to eight dollars an hour. The rate depends on the scale of wages of the local Union of Sign, Scene and Pictorial Artists, affiliated with the Painters, Paperhangers and Decorators of America, an A.F.L-C.I.O. union. This would not represent the scale of wages but the shop charge based on the union scale." Ehr was a journeyman sign painter with a few decades' experience when he self-published his book. He mentions the union quite a bit and despite numerous complaints it's evident that he respects the union for providing a standard. In other words, a union is what upholds the idea of professionalism in a trade. Union tradesmen are legit and can thus charge as such.
In 1957 six to eight dollars an hour, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the equivalent of 73 to 97 dollars an hour in 2026. When I was in Trade Tech in 2015 Doc suggested a student rate of 30 to 50 dollars an hour and once you became proficient, up to 100 dollars an hour. By God, Doc knew what he was talking about. If you are charging 100 dollars an hour then you are right on par with what a journeyman sign writer in 1957 was charging! That means that if you work eight hours a day at the end of the day you will go home with 800 dollars in your pocket! Woohoo! Not so fast...
"The rate depends on the scale of wages..." What does that mean? The customer pays a rate that covers the worker's living wage even when they're not on a job. A typical week might entail one to three jobs, providing anywhere from eight to 60 billable hours. Sometimes, the frequency of jobs slows down (case in point: this summer.) This is the nature of the trade and it always has been. When we are aren't on a job are we kicking our feet up? No. We're doing invoices, buying material, meeting clients, cleaning and organizing our shop, painting small signs to sell, or even, god forbid, practicing! Research and development is not a line I charge for when I do time and materials so the time that I do charge for has to cover all these other things. That's why the rate I set is 100 dollars an hour. So that while I'm maintaining an active hustle I can afford my basic needs.
I want to look at what large corporations pay the sign painters they employ as if it's on the level with the 1957 union rate. Disneyland offers its sign painters a 40 hour work week and benefits such as medical and dental insurance and a 401k retirement fund. Sign painters start at around 30 dollars an hour and can work their way up to 50 dollars an hour. After taxes their take-home salary is about 59k to 75k per year. Los Angeles County sign painters take home around 65k, not including benefits. Whether it seems like a lot or a little, this is guaranteed income. Motion picture Local 729 Set Painters and Sign Writers members earn 50-60 dollars an hour, but they have to pay their yearly dues and the hours are not guaranteed. Think how much the owner of a small sign shop has to charge to pay themselves this much (after taxes) while also covering things like insurance, overhead, and putting away a little for retirement. One person has to generate over 150,000 dollars in sales. Think about that when you're pricing your work. That means bringing in roughly a thousand dollars every two days, Sundays excluded.
How do we keep up? We have to charge a rate that depends on the scale of wages. Set a goal for how much you want to earn per year. Do you want to earn as much as a Disneyland sign painter? They are barely keeping up with what a union sign painter earned in 1957, adjusted for inflation. You want to earn more than that? Figure out your operating costs per month. Rent, utilities, gas, insurance, 1Shot, tools, etc. Estimate your business expenses and add them all up. Multiply it by 12. That's your overhead. Now add your goal number to that. Divide by 52. That's how much you need to average per week to keep up.
There's a pretty brilliant sign painter down in Alabama by the name of Creighton Tynes. He turns out some great work, a student of yesteryear's journeymen who designed with the natural flow of the brush. Creighton built an app that's pretty cool, and it's still only in the testing phase. The app lets you post a job to a feed where others can bid on it. There's an anonymity feature which can be toggled on and off. Only after others have bid does it show them the price you actually got for the job. It's based on user honesty and if used correctly you can see how close your pricing is to that of your peers. It includes factors like market size, years of experience, even the weather when the job is executed. This could be an invaluable tool for the sign painting community, showing the going rate for all types of jobs and challenging us to earn as much as we can for our craft.
There's no union for sign painting at large but I really like the idea of this app because it gets us all on the same page. That could lead to conversations that inform, educate and advance the trade as a whole. And, it's fun! Isn't that why we all got into sign painting in the first place?
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