Every framing page on this site

Frame Styles & Materials

Floater, gallery, and traditional frames, and the woods, metals, and finishes they are made from. Start here if you know what you want to protect and now need to choose how it should look.

• Custom Framing Styles Floater, gallery, and traditional frames explained side by side, with what each one suits.
• Floater Frames for Canvas The clean, modern way to frame a stretched canvas, and how the reveal gap works.
• Frame Profiles Explained Flat, scoop, cap, cassetta, and shadow box profiles drawn in cross-section.
• Framing Oil vs Acrylic Paintings What changes between the two mediums, and what we recommend for each.
• Wood vs Metal Frames Warmth against precision. How the two materials behave, age, and suit different work.
• Natural Wood Frames: Oak, Walnut, Maple, Ash Grain, colour, and hardness of the four woods we use most, and what each flatters.
• Black Frames vs White Frames The most common decision in framing, settled by wall colour, subject, and light.
• Gold & Ornate Frames Gilding, leaf, and carved profiles, and how to use them without the room looking dated.
• Frameless & Gallery Wrap When a painting is finished enough to hang with no frame at all.
• Matching the Frame to the Painting Abstract, landscape, portrait, and still life, each with the frames that serve them.

Glazing & Conservation

Glass, acrylic, mats, and backing. The part of framing that decides whether a painting still looks right in thirty years. This is the hub our own framing standards come from.

• UV Glass & Glazing What UV does to pigment, and which glazing actually stops it.
• Museum Glass vs Conservation Glass Both block UV. Only one kills the reflection. What the difference costs you.
• Acrylic vs Glass Weight, safety, clarity, static, and shipping. When we reach for acrylic instead.
• Anti-Reflective Glass Why a painting opposite a window disappears, and the glazing that fixes it.
• Do Oil Paintings Need Glass? Usually not, and putting one behind glass wrong can damage it. The exceptions.
• Acid-Free Mats & Backing Why cheap backing board burns a brown line into paper, and what we use instead.
• How Framing Protects a Painting Light, humidity, dust, pollution, and handling, and what each layer of a frame stops.
• Framing Works on Paper Watercolour, pencil, pastel, ink, and photography all need something canvas does not.
• Our Conservation Framing Standards The materials and methods we hold to on every piece, and the ones we refuse.

Size, Mats & Proportion

Measuring, mat borders, frame sizes, and the proportions that make a small painting look considered instead of lost. Includes our free frame and mat calculator.

• Frame & Mat Size Calculator Enter your artwork size and get every cut dimension, with a live scaled preview.
• How to Measure a Painting for a Frame Sight size, rebate, and depth. The four measurements to take and the two mistakes to avoid.
• Mat Border Width Guide The proportion rules that make a small painting look expensive instead of lost.
• Double Mats & Fillets The thin second reveal that lifts a work on paper, and when it is too much.
• Standard vs Custom Frame Sizes Why an original almost never fits a shop-bought frame, and what that costs.
• Framing Small Paintings Small work is the easiest to get wrong. Weight, border, and hanging height.
• Framing Large Art How big pieces are built, glazed, and hung so nothing sags or falls.
• Framing a Diptych or Triptych Matching two or three panels, and the gap between them that makes it read as one work.
• Gallery Wall Frame Sizing Sizing a mixed group so it looks arranged rather than accumulated.

Framing In Your Home

Choosing a frame for the room it will hang in, what framing costs, how long it takes, and how to hang it safely once it arrives.

• Frame Colour by Room Matching the frame to your wall colour, your floor, and the light the room gets.
• Framing for Modern Interiors Minimal profiles, generous borders, and the restraint that modern rooms reward.
• Framing for Traditional Interiors Carved and gilded profiles in rooms with mouldings, wood, and warmth.
• Matching Frames Across a Gallery Wall Same frame or mixed frames, and the one rule that holds a mixed group together.
• Framing Art for Kitchens & Bathrooms Steam, cooking grease, and swings in humidity, and the framing that survives them.
• Hanging Hardware for Framed Art D-rings, wire, cleats, and drywall anchors, matched to the weight on the wall.
• Ready to Hang, Explained What arrives ready to hang, what does not, and what we do before a piece ships.
• Custom Framing Cost What framing costs, and the five things that actually move the price.
• Framing Turnaround & Shipping How long framing takes here, and how a framed original is packed and shipped.
• Reframing an Old or Inherited Painting What to keep, what to replace, and how to tell if the old frame is damaging the work.

Canvas, Stretching & Care

Stretcher bars, how a canvas is mounted on them, why one goes slack, and what Vancouver damp does to a painting on fabric. The hub behind our canvas stretching service.

• How a Canvas Is Stretched Bars, tension, corners and staples, in the order a stretcher actually does them.
• Stretcher Bars Explained Depth, profile, kiln-dried timber, keys and cross-braces, and which depth suits which painting.
• Why a Canvas Goes Slack Humidity, age and under-tensioning, and the difference between tapping keys and a full re-stretch.
• Stretching a Rolled Canvas What to do when a painting arrives in a tube, and why you should not unroll it in a cold room.
• What Changes the Cost of Stretching Perimeter, bar depth, cross-bracing and condition. The five things that move the price, with no invented numbers.
• Canvas, Damp and Humidity What a wet climate does to a painting on fabric, which rooms are worst, and how a sealed back changes it.

Framing an original you bought here

• Framing Original Paintings The short version, written for a painting bought from this gallery rather than for a piece you are bringing in.