A larger canvas is easier to paint and harder to finish. Both halves of that are true, and understanding why is the whole decision. Every section is physically bigger, so your brush has room and your eyes have less to strain at. But there are more square inches to cover, more paint to get through, and more evenings before it is done.
What we actually make
Our stock designs come in three configurations: 12x16 framed, 16x20 framed, and 16x20 unframed. 16x20 is our largest stock size.
For a canvas made from your own photograph we go one step further, up to 18x24, framed or unframed. That is our ceiling, and it is a deliberate one rather than a limitation. Past that size the numbered sections in a detailed image get large enough that the finished painting starts to look like a printed pattern filled in, which is the opposite of what anyone wants on a wall.
Kits at 24x36 and beyond do exist elsewhere. They tend to solve the size problem by simplifying the artwork, which is worth knowing before you buy on dimensions alone.
Why bigger is genuinely easier per section
Take the same design at 12x16 and at 16x20. The artwork is identical. Every section is about a third wider at the larger size, and the printed numbers are correspondingly larger.
This matters more than almost anything else for anyone finding the fine detail a strain. If a design you like is described as challenging, buying it at the larger size does more to make it manageable than any brush or lamp will. Our own reviewers raise faint or small numbers more often than any other complaint, and size is the lever that actually moves it.
Why bigger is harder overall
- Roughly 65 percent more area. 16x20 is 320 square inches against 192. That is a real jump in hours, not a rounding difference.
- More paint per color. Kits are supplied for the canvas they come with, but if you blend edges or apply a second coat over light colors you will run through the heavily used pots. An extra paint set matched to the design is cheap insurance on a larger canvas.
- Your hand has further to travel. Resting your painting hand on finished work is the usual cause of smudging, and it happens more on a big canvas. Work top to bottom, and use a bridge or a folded cloth under your wrist.
- It needs somewhere to live. A 16x20 in progress does not fit on a lap or tuck behind a sofa. Somewhere it can stay set up between sessions changes whether it gets finished.
Framed or unframed at the larger sizes
Framed canvases arrive already stretched over a wooden frame, which at 16x20 is the easier option by some distance — it stays rigid while you work and hangs the day it is dry.
Unframed arrives rolled in a tube rather than folded, which is why it turns up without creases. It needs framing afterwards, and at larger sizes that is a real job with a real cost. Read how to frame a finished canvas before choosing unframed, and know that the canvas is cut close to the image, so there is not a generous margin to wrap around stretcher bars. More on how they arrive and why in our note on the rolled canvas.
Where the format came from
Paint by number was conceived in 1949 in Detroit by Max Klein, who owned the Palmer Paint Company, and Dan Robbins, a commercial artist working there. Robbins said the idea came from an account of Leonardo da Vinci handing numbered patterns to his apprentices. The kits launched under the Craft Master name in 1951 and went on to sell more than twelve million.
The scale was smaller then, and so were the canvases. Today's larger formats exist because the printing got better, not because the idea changed.
Choosing a size honestly
Go to 16x20 if the design is detailed, if your eyes are the limiting factor, or if the painting is going on a wall by itself where a smaller canvas would look lost. Stay at 12x16 if it is your first, if the design is already open and simple, or if it is going in a group with other pictures.
The whole catalog is in one collection with both sizes on each design, and the artwork tells you more about the work involved than the dimensions do.
