The true cost of moulding for any frame — with waste and overhead factored in. Price custom frames that actually make margin.
Moulding cost per frame is more than just length times cost per foot. You have to account for the miter allowance (extra length for the corners), waste (offcuts you paid for but can't sell), and optionally markup to convert wholesale to retail. Here's the math:
True Moulding Cost
length (inches) = 2×(W+H) + 8×moulding width
raw cost = (length / 12) × cost per foot
true cost = raw cost × (1 + waste rate)
That waste multiplier is where most shops lose money. If you're pricing based on raw cost only, you're eating 15–25% of material in your margin without realizing it. A $15 raw moulding cost is really $18 after waste. Multiply across a month's volume, and the gap becomes significant.
Enter frame dimensions, moulding specs, and your cost per foot. Get raw, waste-adjusted, and suggested retail pricing.
A standard picture frame has four cuts with mitered corners. The perimeter is 2×(width + height). But miter cuts consume extra material at each corner — typically 2×moulding-width per corner, or 8×moulding-width total for four corners. A 16×20 frame with a 1.5" moulding needs 72" of perimeter plus 12" of miter allowance = 84" of moulding.
Wholesale ranges by moulding type:
The invisible cost. Waste captures all material you paid for but didn't sell. For a shop running 20% waste on a $4.50/ft moulding, the effective cost is $5.40/ft. If you price based on $4.50, you're giving that extra 90 cents to every customer at the cost of your margin.
Custom framing retail markup is typically 3–4x wholesale for material alone. Labor, mat, glass, and shop overhead get priced separately. Some shops price everything as one "united inch rate" — we cover that on the UI calculator.
Moulding cost per foot is set by your supplier. Miter allowance is set by geometry. Retail markup is set by your market. The only variable you fully control is your waste rate — and it's the biggest lever in the formula.
RailChop is built to cut that multiplier in half. Industry-average shops run 20–25% waste. Shops running RailChop-style optimization typically run 8–12%. On $3,000/month in moulding, that's $300–$400/month you keep instead of losing to offcuts.
Either works, but they produce different numbers. Per-foot pricing is simple and transparent. Per-frame pricing (or per-UI, which is equivalent) captures the miter-allowance overhead that per-foot misses. Most retail framers use per-UI pricing; most wholesale catalogs quote per-foot.
No — this is moulding-only. A custom frame quote also includes matboard, glass, labor, and shop overhead. Multiply out: a $15 moulding cost typically becomes a $60–$90 material-plus-labor charge in a final customer quote for the same frame.
22% is a common starting estimate when you've never measured. If you've never measured, you're likely above 20%. If you batch orders and occasionally use remnants, you're probably in the upper teens. If you have a systematic cut planning workflow, you're typically lower. Getting below the low double-digits generally requires dedicated software.
Close enough for quoting and monthly budgeting. For per-job precision — the exact material used on each frame in a batch, with remnants integrated and kerf applied between every cut — you need a real cut optimizer. This calculator rounds assumptions; an optimizer computes exactly.
RailChop tracks moulding cost per frame for every cut plan — and shows your true production cost over time.
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