25 June 2026
How much to spend on a retirement gift: an honest guide
Nobody can tell you what a retirement gift ought to cost, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. What it can do is take our own prices, which include UK delivery, and show what each one comes to on its own and split across a collection.
The short answer
We have no survey of what Britain spends, and we are not going to invent one. What we can do is work backwards from our own prices, which include UK delivery, so the figure below is the whole cost rather than a starting point.
- An office collection: pick the gift first, then divide its price by the number of people. Organising a group retirement gift does that division for every size we sell.
- One person buying alone: the print range runs £14.99 at A4 to £34.49 at 50x70cm, and £69.00 framed at A3.
- A spouse, or a long career: the framed canvas is £119.99 at 30x40cm and £139.99 at 40x50cm.
Those are our suggestions, not a rule anybody else follows.
Office collections, and what a suggested amount reaches
Set a suggested amount rather than a fixed one, and make it easy to skip. Beyond that, the useful arithmetic is our prices divided by the number of people, because every one of them includes UK delivery and there is nothing to add at checkout.
A team of 15 at £7 each raises £105. That reaches:
- A personalised framed A3 print (£69.00) with a good card
- A canvas 30×40cm (£85.00), with change left for the card
- Most of a framed canvas 30×40cm (£119.99), which wants either a larger team or a higher suggested amount
For the group gift, see organising a group retirement gift: the framed canvas at £119.99 to £139.99 is the top of what we sell, and the page divides each of our prices by the size of the group.
Individual gifts: by relationship
A colleague you worked closely with
Between colleagues the print range is the one that fits without discussion:
- A4 personalised print (£14.99): clean, frameable, specific to them
- A3 personalised print (£28.99): slightly more prominent
Both are in the personalised retirement gifts range. At £28.99, a quality A3 print is something they'll frame rather than file away.
A friend
A framed A3 print at £69.00 arrives ready to hang, with no framing left for the recipient to organise. That is the version of the same design that needs nothing doing to it.
A family member
Family is where somebody usually knows which wall the thing is going on, and that changes the decision more than the budget does. If the wall is known, the framed canvas at £119.99 is the piece sized for it.
A spouse or partner
A spouse retiring changes the household, not just the diary. The framed canvas at £119.99 or £139.99 is the largest thing we make, and it is made from a photograph rather than from typed lines: it comes out of the portrait route, not the name print. If you want their name, profession and years of service set in type, that is the print or the plain canvas instead.
Start at /personalise/ to build it with their specifics, or use /create/ if you have a photo you want to turn into art.
What different budgets actually get you
| Budget | What it buys |
|---|---|
| £9.99 | Digital download: printable at home or at a print shop; excellent for last-minute |
| £14.99 | A4 personalised print: name, profession, years of service, workplace |
| £16.99 | Personalised mug with their name |
| £28.99 | A3 personalised print |
| £85.00 | Canvas 30×40cm |
| £69.00 | Framed A3 poster: ready to hang |
| £109.99 | Canvas 50×70cm |
| £119.99 | Framed canvas 30×40cm: reached by fifteen people at eight pounds each, or ten at twelve |
| £139.99 | Framed canvas 40×50cm, the centrepiece leaving gift |
Where personalisation changes the value equation
The £28.99 A3 print carries four facts nobody else could supply: their name, their profession, their years of service and where they worked. A hamper at the same money carries none of them, and is eaten by March.
What the UK government's ACAS guidance says about retirement at work
ACAS guidance covers how employers handle retirement fairly, including avoiding any pressure on employees about when or whether to retire. That context is worth noting when you're organising an office collection: the gift should feel like a celebration, not a send-off. Keep the collection voluntary and the total transparent so the recipient knows what the team contributed, rather than being surprised by either a modest or an unexpectedly large gift.
A note on last-minute situations
If you've discovered the leaving do is tomorrow, the digital download at £9.99 is the cleanest solution: it's delivered by email within minutes and can be printed the same day. See the digital downloads collection.
Anything printed spends two to four working days at the press and two to five in the post. Allow a fortnight and nothing is tight. Inside that, the file is the right call and nothing to be embarrassed about.
Written by Craig Fearn, The Retirement Gift Co.
Frequently asked
How much should you spend on a retirement gift from the office?
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There is no figure we can point to a source for, so here is ours instead: decide the gift, then divide its price by the number of people. Our prices include UK delivery, so the split is the whole cost, and the group-gift guide runs that division across the range. Keep contributions voluntary.
How much should you spend on a personal retirement gift?
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Work from the object rather than a band. The print is £14.99 at A4 and £28.99 at A3, £69.00 framed at A3 and ready to hang. The framed canvas, which is made from a photograph rather than typed lines, is £119.99 at 30x40cm and £139.99 at 40x50cm.
Is a personalised retirement gift worth the extra cost?
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A £28.99 A3 print carries their name, their profession, their years of service and where they worked. Nothing generic at the same price carries any of that. The personalisation costs nothing extra: it is the same price whichever of the four lines you fill in.
