The Business of Home Murals: What Your Mural Contract Should State
Mural contract Item 1: How much will it cost?
Your contract should spell out how much you will charge. This seems like a no-brainer, but the biggest misunderstandings in life are over money. Not only should your contract state exactly what you are charging for the mural, but it should also state your supply fee and travel fee as well. For example, it can read like this: “cost of Mural ($0.00) Mural Supplies ($100.00), Travel expenses ($100.00 ~based on four trips at 25 cents per mile). “Another example would be: cost of Mural ($2000.00) Mural Supplies ($0.00 ~included in price), Travel expenses ($500.00 ~airfare and hotel stay).
Your charges need to be spelled out, and clear, to eliminate the chance of any assumptions. Anything and everything agreed to verbally when it comes to cost, needs to written down. You would be amazed at how many people are surprised when you remind them they agreed to pay travel or material expenses for a free mural or for hotel stay when you have to travel to do the work.
Mural contract Item 2: How big will it be?
It needs to have the agreed upon boundaries of the mural. From the time of the original request, to the actual application of the mural, the mural can mysteriously grow in the clients mind, or shrink in the artist mind. Do not let this happen to you. By spelling out the exact physical dimensions of the mural: from this wall to that wall, or exactly 4X5 or 10 X 12. Be very specific. Spelling it out in the contract with pictures of the wall, with markings will help to avoid misunderstandings later.
Mural contract Item 3: Exactly what will it look like?
A detailed drawing of what the mural will look like should be included in the mural contract. So many times in my mural career, I have gotten halfway through a mural to have clients say something like: “the bird should be facing this way” or “this area needs something extra”. Do a very detailed drawing of the proposed mural to avoid this problem. Watercolor or colored pencil will help the client to understand what the mural will look like. An excellent tool to be sure the client understands exactly what the mural will look like is a projector. An overhead, or projector attached to your computer will blow your drawing up to the proper size so the client can see the mural on their wall. The added benefit in having the drawing complete before you start and displaying it on the projector is that you can also use the projector to transfer the drawing on the wall, which will save you lots of time on-site.
Mural contract Item 4: Will there be any additional charges?
Do not anger your clients by tacking them on at the end of the job. At the same time, you do not want to end up feeling abused or bullied into extra work without pay. Spell out extra charges in the contract. Items you should charge extra for are: room not prepared as agreed, large items left in the room that you need to maneuver around, higher ceilings than expected (this happens often if you don’t preview the room before hand), client wanting changes after the mural sketch has been signed or after painting has begun.
Mural contract Item 5: How long will it take you to complete the mural?
While clients want a beautiful mural in their home, they seldom want the imposition and disturbance to the home that often results. Spell out the amount of time you think it will take to complete the mural, allowing for the unexpected, of course. Do your best to stick to this time. By setting an approximate amount of time, it will take you to complete the mural, it will help to put your customer at ease, and give you an idea as to when you can schedule the start of your next mural project.
Mural contract item 6: Leaving so soon?
Clients often expect you to act more like employees than contactors. When they have hired you paint a mural, they expect to get a full days work out of you. For me, a full day’s work when painting a mural is four hours. On a really good day, I might paint six hours. Painting on large services is physically taxing, and the creative process is emotionally draining. Let your clients know in advance how long they can expect you to be on the job and on what days. Do not give them a chance to think you are lazy or unreliable.
Mural contract item 7: How much should they pay upfront?
According to popular contractor advice, customers have learned to pay as little up front as possible, saving the bulk of the pay for the completion of the contract. While that is great protection for the customer, it does little to put food on the artists table. The client should pay at least $100.00 for your sketch fee, and then, on the day you begin painting, they should give you 1/3 of the agreed contract price.
Mural Contract item 8: Collecting the balance of your fees.
Some mural artists have run into trouble collecting the balance of their mural fees. First, you need to request the balance of your payment promptly at the completion of the project. If it is a large project, you should request payment on a weekly or biweekly basis based on your completion schedule. The only time you should leave an invoice to be paint in 30 days, for example, is if you are dealing with a large company. Otherwise, you need to stand your ground and request payment immediately upon the completion of your last brush mark. In many cases, once you are out of their sight, you will be out of their mind.
Mural Contract item 9: Touch ups and additions
You need to add an additional work agreement to your mural contract. It should state that you will spend X number of hours touching up the mural within X amount of weeks. After that, you will charge your hourly rate for any additional murals unless they are due to artist’s error, which you will gladly do for free BEFORE a specified date. Give them about 30 days to inspect the mural. You may also want to set a date to come out and give the mural a second look and to fix any boo-boos, as you do not want them calling you out weekly for the next month.
As far as additional work is concerned, like adding another character to the mural, your contract should state that a new contract will be negotiated.
Mural contract item 10: Who owns the mural?
Your contract should be crystal clear about who owns the mural. As the artist of the mural, you need to retain ownership of the artwork while selling the client possession of the mural unless they pay you an additional copyright fee. This way you can paint the same mural or other clients, and reproduce your mural on postcards, paintings and other mediums. Be selling the copyright of your mural to your client, they can use a photo of the mural on business cards, t-shirts, or in any other way that suits them.
I once painted a free mural for a beauty salon (for advertising reasons). I have to admit being a bit unhappy when I was later handed a business card with my image on it. I could do little about it however, because I had not to mention specified ownership rights of the image.
There will be times when you not have ownership rights to the mural at all. For example, I was asked to paint a mural for church using characters from the Sunday school curriculum. I had the church request information to use the characters, which was granted, but neither the church nor I owned reproduction rights to the mural. The same goes for Disney Characters and the painting of an image you did not create that is not in the public domain. As a rule, I do not paint the images of others without their permission. Since Disney does not grant these permissions, I do not re-create their images.
