Our top choice is Minted, a marketplace that features artists from more than 100 countries. With prices starting at $28 for a small print, you’re bound to find something affordable that will spark joy and blend in well with your home decor style. Below, the best places to buy art online and tips on mastering the art buying process. Particularly popular among Real Simple’s editors, Minted is one of our favorite sources to buy art online from a variety of independent artists. The site has lots of filters to help you find what you’re looking for—although you can just browse, as well. You can shop by mediums, including paintings, drawings, and photography. You can also sort by style, including abstract, landscape and portraits. There’s also a part of the site that allows you to shop by the room in your house, with curated collections that the Minted team believes would look best in your living room, bedroom, dining room, and even bathroom. You can buy a piece of art on Minted with or without a frame. Unlike some other sites that sell art, you can customize your borders and matting as well as the color of your frame. Doing this will add an extra $100 to your order, but it saves you time making a trip to your local arts and crafts store for a custom frame job. Product Details:
Return Window: Handled on a case-by-case basis.Free Shipping: NoPayment Options: Credit card and PayPal. No financing options are available.
Saatchi Art is a great place to shop for original art. You’ll find original paintings, drawings, photography, and even sculptures. The site allows you to search these mediums by style, subject, and materials used to make the art piece. Paintings include fine art, abstract, and modern as well as less common styles such as pop art and street art. Meanwhile, photography styles available include portraiture, abstract, conceptual, and more. Original paintings, drawings, and photography start at $135, while sculptures start at $140. There is a more affordable section of the site that does curate originals that are also available in prints, with prices starting at $40. The price of the original is also listed next to the print, so if you find a piece of art that you are in love with, you can consider whether it’s worth it to splurge on the original. You have the option for your order to include a frame, with the option to customize your frame by color. Product Details:
Return Window: Return requests must be submitted seven days from the delivery date for original artwork and 30 days for edition prints.Free Shipping: Only if you buy original artwork.Payment Options: Financing is available with Affirm.
With its large inventory of artists and creators, you’re bound to find some incredible, one-of-a-kind pieces of art on Etsy. The site is a great place for people who know exactly what they want and are willing to put in some serious searching scrolling time to get there. If you aren’t exactly sure what you’re looking for, the site gives you helpful filters to sort through its vast array of art pieces, including prints, photography, paintings, illustration, and sculpture. There is also a section dedicated to glass art, fiber arts, mixed media, and even dolls and miniatures. Prices vary greatly by vendor, but you can narrow down your search by a range of price points. Etsy is pretty affordable and you can easily find 8 x 10-inch prints for as little as $20. Keep in mind that Etsy is basically the eBay for arts and crafts, so each seller has its own policies regarding returns. Read the shop’s policy, seller reviews, and be mindful of the location of the artist before you buy (there are a lot of international sellers on Etsy). Product Details:
Return Window: Varies by seller.Free Shipping: Varies by seller.Payment Options: Financing available with Klarna.
Society6 is a choice platform for independent artists to sell their work, so you’ll have plenty of options at your fingertips with this art website. More than 450,000 artists from 170-plus countries sell their art here, including prints, posters, tapestries, murals, and so much more. Wall art can be searched framed or unframed. Compared to other art websites, Society6 offers a variety of frame options to choose from, including recessed frames, floating acrylic frames, frames for small pieces of art and canvas prints. What’s also great about Society6 is that it caters to people who need a little guidance for finding what they want. You can locate art by theme, with options including landscape, travel, animals, food, for kids, funny, and more. You can also easily browse an artist’s catalog of work, which is a great option if you’re looking to create a cohesive art story in your home. The site offers paintings, photography, illustration, and a big home decor section where you’ll find artistic pillows, curtains, and area rugs, to name a few. Product Details:
Return Window: Return requests need to be submitted 60 days after your order’s delivery date.Free Shipping: NoPayment Options: Financing available with Klarna.
Anthropologie’s selection of art is just as chic and carefully curated as its fashion offerings. Although a small selection, Anthropology’s art department offers popular art styles, including abstract, portraits, landscape, and still life. The brand particularly has an abundance of artwork that depicts flora and fauna, with artwork featuring animals, natural scenery, and plants and flowers in and outdoors. The site also has an excellent selection of pre-framed artwork. This is great for someone who doesn’t want to buy a frame separately or to go through the decision-making process involved with custom framing. The included framing, which ranges from textured gold to rustic wood trim, complements the artwork so beautifully that it looks like it was assessed and selected by a professional. Because of this, you can expect to pay more than what you’d see on other art websites. Product Details:
Return Window: Returns accepted 60 days after order date.Free Shipping: Only on orders that are $50 or more.Payment Options: Financing available with Afterpay.
REALTED: The 23 Best Candles to Make Your Home Smell Amazing If you’re wanting to fill your walls with works from the greats, including Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali, Warhol, Rothko, and more, turn to Art.com. The site sells works from these masters as well as hundreds of other iconic paintings including “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai, “The Japanese Footbridge” by Claude Monet, and the “The Kiss, 1907-08” by Gustav Klimt. There is also a robust photography section that sells equally iconic photographs, ranging from Ansel Adams’ famous National Parks photography and photos from the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Art.com also allows you to add frames to your order and, depending on the chosen artwork, it may also be available in canvas. If you aren’t sure exactly what you want, the site offers plenty of helpful filters, narrowing down their collection by artist name, art movement, trends, subjects, and more. Product Details:
Return Window: Returns are accepted within 45 days after the order is shipped out from the warehouse.Free Shipping: YesPayment Options: Financing available with Affirm.
Calling all fans of photography! You don’t want to miss Lumas, an online marketplace for art photography. The brand boasts more than 3,000 pieces of photography from 250 artists from around the world, including both established names and up-and-comers. From overhead beach photography snapped from helicopters to nature prints and portraits, there are options here for every style. You can search Lumas’ vast collection by photography type, including animal, celebrities, still life, abstract, conceptual photography, and more. Unlike other art websites, you aren’t given a lot of freedom in terms of customizing a frame, should you want to add one. However, you are given the unique option to frame it the way the artist or curator recommends based on the piece itself. This option comes with a cost, upwards of a couple hundred extra dollars, so it might be worth it just to have the photos framed yourself if you want a particular style. Prices are generally $100 and up, but you can find unframed prints for less than $40. Product Details:
Return Window: 30 daysFree Shipping: NoPayment Options: Financing available with Klarna.
The art sold through Urban Outfitters has just as much personality as the brand itself. If you’re looking for something funky, kitschy, vintage-inspired, and a lot of fun, you’ll enjoy the clothing brand’s collection of prints for purchase. Scroll through and you’ll find everything from vintage band posters to colorful typography and Henri Matisse-inspired still lifes, with this version including cats. The brand also sells pop art of Mickey Mouse and there’s an entire series dedicated to Star Wars. The majority of art available are prints, whether that’s a print of an illustration, painting, or photography. Some art comes with frames included, and compared to other websites, the prices aren’t too bad. For an 18 x 24 inch print with a frame, you’ll be able to pay as little as $39. Product Details:
Return Window: Returns are accepted within 30 days of your order’s delivery date.Free Shipping: Only on orders that are $50 or more.Payment Options: Financing available with Afterpay.
RELATED: 25 Black-Owned Home Decor Brands to Shop If your heart is set on a piece of art that you want to frame, but it falls outside of standard frame sizes, look for frame options before you buy so you know what you’re getting into. Custom framing is always an option, but know that it is a very expensive venture. Basic, non-decorative custom framing jobs usually start at $100. Oftentimes, local art supply or craft stores do custom framing and advertise discounts on their website, or even on Groupon. If you’d rather not roll the dice on finding non-standard sized frames, some art websites give you the option of adding a frame for an additional cost. This will be more expensive, but it might not be as expensive as finding a non-standard frame size or going custom.
Final Verdict
Overall, we recommend shopping Minted if you’re looking for new art. Minted offers affordable photography, painting, and illustration prints in a variety of artistic styles, including landscape and abstract, that will suit any home decor style. Plus, the options available for customizing your frame aren’t common in other sites that sell art online.
Questions You Might Ask
How do I choose what kind of art is best for my home?
There are a number of factors to take into consideration when deciding what kind of art is best for your home. The first thing you should do is understand your artistic taste and how it can fit into the current style of your home. If your decor is minimalist or modern, an abstract piece of art, which focuses on bold shapes, lines, and colors, may work well in your home. If your decor is quirky and kitschy, you may be more drawn to contemporary or pop art, which are reflective of the present day and oftentimes feature takes on pop culture. People with a more boho style home might gravitate toward art with flora and fauna. When in doubt, a great place to start is travel. Art sites also offer plenty of filter options to help you figure out what you want. Some of these filters allow you to sort their collection by subject matter, art style, medium type, and even home decor style type.
What is the difference between originals and prints?
Original artwork is produced manually by the artist, whereas prints are made from a machine. Originals are the more expensive of the two, by a landslide. Originals are usually hundreds or thousands of dollars, even if they aren’t large pieces of art. You can expect to pay at least $200 for an original, but that is at the very low end. Originals usually run between $600 to $60,000, and oftentimes are even more than that. That is why print copies are a very popular, affordable alternative. Artists know that everyone can’t afford originals, so more often than not they make print copies of those originals and sell them for fractions of the original’s price. Prints can be found for as little as $20. They are widely available and can be easily found on art websites, retail stores, and artists’ websites. Sometimes, limited edition prints can be more expensive than prints available year-round, but they are still a lot less expensive than originals. If a piece of art is an original, it is usually specified.
Take Our Word for It
This article was written by Rachel Center, a product reviews home writer for Real Simple and an avid art collector for more than six years. She spent hours researching where to find the best places to buy art, ultimately choosing the websites on this list based on price as well as art style and mediums available.
