Artists DE

Tool

Frame Studio

Choose a picture, a frame, a mat and a wall colour. Compare before you visit the framer.

A water lily pond with a green Japanese footbridge and weeping willows in morning haze
Picture
Frame
Mat
Wall
Size of the picture

Framing decisions are easier to make with your eyes than with a catalogue of corner samples. Frame Studio lets you try the main styles, mats and wall colours on a picture, and it calculates the outer size of the framed work from the size of the picture, the mat and the moulding.

Frame, mat and wall work together

A frame is a bridge between the picture and the room. Thin black or natural wood frames suit most contemporary work; gilded frames bring warmth and history; a floater frame leaves the edges of a canvas visible. Mats give works on paper space to breathe and keep the glazing off the surface. Try the same picture against a light and a dark wall: the right frame often changes with the wall.

What the preview cannot show

Real mouldings have depth, texture and finish that a screen only suggests, and colours on a screen are approximate. Use the preview to narrow your choice, then look at real corner samples in daylight. For valuable works on paper, ask for conservation framing with acid free materials and UV filtering glazing, explained in our framing guide and our guide to caring for art.

Questions

How wide should a mat be?

There is no single rule, but mats that look generous usually work better than narrow ones: for small and medium works on paper, widths of roughly 5 to 10 cm are common, and some framers make the bottom slightly wider than the top so the picture does not appear to sink. Try different widths in the preview.

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Behind the tool