What is a reasonable price for a custom WP theme?

There is no such thing as reasonable cost. “Reasonable” is a value judgment. Depending on how complex a theme you want, it may take anywhere between one day and two weeks to design and develop it. One day is eight billable hours, two weeks is at least 80 billable hours. Hourly rates vary widely; in the U.S., even dropping offshore developers from consideration, you’re still looking at a range between $20/hour (students and hobbyists, some are quite good) and well in excess of $100/hour (full-service shops with office overhead). I looked at your profile and it says you’re in UK, so I don’t know how relevant my U.S. guesstimates are for your locale…

As to installation and configuration, it’s something that normally takes about an hour; some server environments are tricker than others though, so they may need a little extra coaxing…

OK,

So I could reasonably expect to pay $160 – $8000 depending on the rates/complexity. I would guess that companies charging nearer the top end should include installation and configuration?

It doesn’t really matter about being in the UK, in fact, the exchange rate is so good that I would prefer to pay in dollars ??

Thanks!!

Isaac

Installation and configuration are relatively simple tasks once you’ve done them a couple times. There is even a free installation service, which, however, is severely backlogged at the moment, so they temporarily stopped accepting new requests. So there may be developers who wouldn’t mind throwing in the installation to get the job…