Ten to twenty hours of actual painting for a 16x20 canvas, spread over two to six weeks. That is the honest answer for most designs, and it is what our own customers report.
A few of ours run longer, nearer twenty-five hours, and we say so on those product pages rather than letting people find out.
Painting time versus calendar time
These are two different numbers and mixing them up is why estimates vary so wildly online.
Painting time is hours with a brush in your hand. Ten to twenty for a typical 16x20.
Calendar time is how long the canvas sits on your table. Most people paint in sittings of thirty minutes to two hours, a few evenings a week, so a fortnight to a couple of months is normal. Nothing spoils if you leave it, provided the lids are on the pots.
If somebody tells you a kit took them three weeks, that is calendar time and it tells you almost nothing.
What actually drives the difference
The number of regions, not the size of the canvas
This is the main factor and it is not visible from the dimensions. A design broken into a few hundred generous shapes is a very different proposition from one broken into a couple of thousand slivers, at the same canvas size.
Look at the busiest corner of the design in the product photograph. Dense foliage, rows of windows, crowds and cobbles are where the hours go. Sky, water and open fields go quickly.
Size, but backwards from what you would expect
A 16x20 and a 12x16 of the same design have the same number of regions. The larger canvas takes a little longer because there is more area to cover, but not dramatically so, and each shape is bigger and easier to fill. The smaller canvas is not the faster option in the way people assume; it is the fiddlier one.
Second coats on the pale colors
Every region has a black printed number in it. Yellows, creams and pale blues will not bury that in one pass, so those regions get painted twice. Depending on the design that can add a couple of hours, and it is not a fault in the kit.
Drying waits, if you work in the wrong order
Acrylic is touch-dry in minutes, so this should not cost you anything. It only does if you jump around the canvas and keep arriving at a region next to something you painted a moment ago. Working one color all the way across before opening the next pot removes the waits entirely, and it is the main reason that method is faster. Our note on the best way to do painting by numbers sets out the full order.
Your own pace, which varies more than anything else
Some people fill regions steadily and finish in twelve hours. Others check every shape twice against the reference sheet and take twenty-five on the same canvas. Neither is doing it wrong.
How to estimate your own, in the first hour
Far more reliable than any published figure. Paint for one full hour on your first sitting, then look at how much of the canvas is finished.
- Around a tenth done: you are on course for roughly ten hours.
- Around a twentieth: roughly twenty hours.
Then add about a fifth, because the last quarter of any canvas is the fiddly quarter. The large areas go first and the small detail is always what is left.
Our own designs, roughly
Ten to twenty hours covers most of the range. Moonlight Bay is a good example: a full moon over a still lake, with the sky, water and moon track all going in as wide unbroken areas, and only the campfire asking for small work.
Nearer twenty-five hours applies to three of ours. Seaside Escape has breaking surf built from a great many narrow shapes across the whole middle of the canvas. Mountain Village and Beautiful Sunset in Amsterdam are both architecture, which means roofs, windows and railings one at a time.
None of those are worse kits. They are longer ones, and if you want to spend a month on something, that is the point rather than the drawback.
Two ways to make it take longer, both worth it
The last hour is worth more than any hour in the middle. Holding the canvas up to a window to find where a number still ghosts through, and touching in any printed outline still visible at the end, adds perhaps an hour and changes how the finished piece reads from across the room.
And a coat of acrylic varnish, a week after the last brushstroke, takes ten minutes. It evens out the patchy sheen between thick and thin passages and gives you something you can dust.
If you are buying it as a gift
Say the number out loud when you hand it over. Somebody expecting an afternoon project will stall on the second evening; somebody expecting a few weeks of quiet evenings will finish it. The expectation matters more than the design.
Our guide for beginners covers the first sitting, and the designs are in the full collection.
