Family portraits with Five Castles Portraits start from $450 for a single canvas piece, and most families end up investing somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000 once they've built out a fuller collection for their walls. Designer Portfolio Prints start from $250, Wall Art Collections from $2,750, and Keepsake Art Albums from $3,500. Every figure includes GST, and payment plans are available if you'd rather spread the cost.
That's the honest range. What decides where you land within it is you, not us, because the whole point of the consultation is to work out what your home actually needs before anyone talks numbers.
Why there's no single number to quote
If you've searched for "family portrait cost Melbourne" hoping for one tidy figure, I understand the instinct, but a single number would be a lie dressed up as convenience. A young couple furnishing their first home wants something different from a family with three kids and a long hallway begging for a Framed Story Board. One piece over the fireplace is a different decision to a full Wall Art Collection across a staircase. The range exists because the artwork is built around your walls, not the other way round.
What I can tell you is what sits inside that range:
- Premium canvas, wrapped or framed, 11x14" up to 36x55": from $450
- Designer Portfolio Prints, 8x12" prints in 11x14" mats: from $250
- Wall Art Collections (Belvedere, Casterly Rock, Dragonstone, Highgarden and Winterfell, plus the Framed Story Boards): from $2,750
- Keepsake Art Albums, 8x8" or 11x11": from $3,500
We'll walk through why portraits are priced as artwork rather than as a photography package, but the short version is that these are hand-finished pieces made to be displayed for decades, not files sitting on a hard drive.
What actually happens before you spend anything
Nobody is asked to commit to a figure sight unseen. The process runs across three meetings, and money doesn't come up properly until the second half of it.
First, there's a one-hour consultation at the Belgrave gallery, where you see finished artwork on the wall, hear how the pricing works, and plan the session around your family and your home. This is where prices are shown openly, with real pieces in front of you rather than a number on a screen. There's also a free family styling guide if you'd like a sense of what to wear before that meeting. Second comes the portrait session itself, timed around sunrise or sunset and around your children's age and routine, whether that's at the studio or on location in the Dandenong Ranges. Third is the viewing and design appointment, usually within a week of the session, where you choose your favourites and design the artwork together.
That third meeting is where the real decision gets made, because by then you're not imagining a price list, you're looking at your own family on the wall of the gallery and deciding what belongs on yours.
The consultation exists so the first time you hear a number, you're also looking at the artwork it buys.
What most families actually spend
Most families invest between $1,500 and $3,000 on their collection. That figure sits below a single Keepsake Art Album and above a couple of canvas pieces, because most families land somewhere in the middle: a hero piece for the loungeroom, a smaller print for the hallway, maybe a Designer Portfolio Print for a bedroom. It's rarely one purchase. It's a small collection built to suit the rooms you actually live in.
A few things tend to shift a family up or down within that range. How many rooms you're furnishing matters more than how many people are in the portrait, since a family of five might choose one hero canvas while a couple with a larger home fills a staircase with a Framed Story Board. Whether you're starting from nothing or adding to an existing collection matters too, and so does whether you'd rather solve the whole house in one appointment or add a piece each year. None of that gets decided before the consultation. It gets worked out at it, with the artwork in front of you rather than a spreadsheet.
If a full Wall Art Collection feels like the bigger step, it's worth knowing why they're priced the way they are and what you get for it, since a collection is designed as a set rather than several unrelated pieces bought separately. Sets like Belvedere or Winterfell exist because a handful of pieces chosen together, sized and framed to work as one arrangement, read differently on a wall than the same number of prints bought one at a time.
Digital files, and why they're not sold on their own
A common question at this point is whether you can just buy the digital files and skip the printed artwork. The studio doesn't sell full-resolution digital files as a standalone product, though they do accompany the larger packages. If you're weighing up wall art against digital files, it's worth reading before your consultation, because it explains what you're actually deciding between: something built to be displayed in your home, or a folder that mostly stays unopened.
Spreading the cost
Because most families are choosing a collection rather than a single item, payment plans are available so the investment doesn't have to land in one payment. This gets set up at the design appointment once you know what you're buying, and it's worth reading about how the payment plans work if the size of the number is what's been holding you back, rather than the artwork itself.
Every portrait begins with a conversation at the Belgrave gallery.