PRICING

We often get phone inquiries that start out “How much do you charge for a stained glass window that measures….”. No amount of explaining that the intricacy of the window determines the price will convince some people. They still want an “average” price. That being said, listed below are some of the factors that affect the final price.

Size & Materials: Size primarily equates to materials. As a percentage of total cost, materials range between 10% on complex panels to 25% on simple ones. And while there are some glass selections that would increase the materials cost (custom bevels, jewels, dichroic, or some of the pinks that contain gold to create the color) the majority of glass falls into a narrow price range that would not change the price of the panel if changes were made.

However, the one other factor that affects the price of materials out here in the middle of the Pacific is shipping. We stock a large inventory of glass to try to mitigate that problem, shipping in large quantities once or twice each year so that the cost added to the glass for shipping is generally less than $1 per square foot. However, if you must immediately have a particular glass that we do not carry in stock, the cost of shipping a single square foot of glass can easily cost $40. Planning ahead can have large benefits.

Intricacy of Design: This is the biggest factor affecting cost. Some of our large contemporary designs rely on large swatches of color or textured glass for effect, and may average only 3 or 4 pieces of glass per square foot. These are easy to assemble and could price out as low as $125 per square foot. Other designs may have as many as 60 pieces per square foot, perhaps pieces that require special work such as painting or fusing, and run as high as $1000 per square foot. Small panels tend to have a higher square-foot cost than large panels, because customers often want just as much content in a small panel (more pieces per square foot) as they have seen in larger panels. Also, administrative overhead (design meetings, glass selections, measuring and installation planning, delivery) may be nearly as much on a small panel as on a large one. And of course, there are fewer square feet to spread that cost over.