Should You Rent or Buy Art For Your Office?

Over the past 5+ years, it’s been our pleasure to work with our corporate clients to rent, purchase, or commission art for their offices, retail spaces, or restaurants. It’s also been interesting to learn what clients want, how they’re using their spaces, and how IPaintMyMind’s various art services can play a part in telling a story while energizing the space. Should you rent or buy art for your office? We might have some answers. 

Whether rotating art rentals for offices, building art collections via acquisitions, or commissioning murals and large scale works, it’s really all about the company culture and the space.

First, culture, because the personality, tone, tenor, and vibe of the company we work with is everything. By learning more about our clients work and goals, we’re able to help curate options that are a perfect fit for the people that work in the space every day.

And secondly, the space, because the design, layout, and flow of the office really dictates what project make sense in each space.

That said, there are a few questions any company will want to ask themselves when evaluating the various options, ahead I unpack the pros and cons, as well as offer some insight that will help your decision-makers pick the perfect art vendor and project for you.

Renting Art

Leasing art for your space is an incredible way to keep your office, restaurant, or retail location fresh. When we work with clients that purchased art for their spaces before finding us, they often are confronted with what to do with the old art they no longer want. This happens all the time, I can’t tell you enough! What’s more, 99.9% of companies don’t have an internal position with someone tasked to manage, catalogue, move, store, and rotate whatever was hung on the wall.

Inevitably, teams change and the calendar moves forward, and after a while, people on your team will be “over” the current art. Renting art for your space and having it rotated every 3, 6 or 12 months, really gives you the ability to host impressively on an ongoing basis.

If you hire IPaintMyMind for your art rental subscription, we also offer super unique differentiators – your art funds art programs in underserved schools and you get the chance to help our team install art in a local school. Get art, give back, how rad is that?!

IPaintMyMind x Pat Perry for LinkedIn Detroit

Purchasing Art / Acquisitions

The upside to purchasing art for your space is that, theoretically, you don’t have to solve that problem again. In our experience, that’s not entirely the case, but it is a solid route to make sure the space looks good, and fast. You’ll want culture to really inform your choices since you’ll have the pieces for the forseable future. 

You’ll also want to think about cataloguing these assets, and potential storage options and transportation implications, if your company every moves into a new space. 

Working with an art consultant to manage, move, and preserve art your company already owns will also be a good call once you’ve begun building the collection. Adding new artists and pieces to the collection over time is also a really interesting way to invest, market, and connect with your local community.

Murals & Large Commissions

Murals are becoming a really popular way  to make an impression, and with due reason! Mural artists all over the world are creating incredible works, often time very cohesively aligned with contemporary brands. Your space will definitely limit the ability to commission a mural, but it’s also fun to find unique ways in which a mural can become part of a unique office or retail design layout.

Of course, murals won’t go with you when you move into your new office, which is something to consider. Many companies move every few years in accordance with growth, so whether commissioning a large scale painting that can be moved or sticking with art rentals at gallery sizing, you have great options.

Feel free to contact our team at IPaintMyMind about a FREE Art Consulting call to help go over your options. We love connecting with companies that are building solutions of the future with a focus on giving back and being part of giving back to their communities.

You’re going to put something on the wall, it might as well look incredible and make the world a better place!