Framing Artwork: Options, Costs, and Presentation

A frame is the first thing anyone sees, and it changes how the work reads before they've looked at it properly. The wrong one competes with the piece. The right one disappears. Most of the decisions below come down to material, money, and what the venue expects, and none of them are as mysterious as framers make them sound.

Frame Styles for Different Work

For Canvas and Panels

Float Frames The standard for contemporary galleries. Canvas appears to float within the frame with visible gap around edges.

• Works with gallery-wrapped canvas
• Clean contemporary look
• Shows full painting including edges
• Popular finishes: natural wood, black, white, raw steel

Gallery Frames (L-Profile) Simple molding that wraps around canvas edge. Less expensive than float frames, still professional.

• Budget-friendly option
• Works with standard or gallery-wrapped canvas
• Can be painted to match or contrast

Unframed Presentation For gallery-wrapped canvas, unframed is acceptable if the edges are finished. That means the painting continues around the sides or the edges are cleanly stained, hanging hardware is properly installed, and there's a dust cover on the back. A raw staple line reads as unfinished no matter how good the front is.

For Works on Paper

Paper needs protection that canvas doesn't, and the framing has to provide it.

Traditional Frame with Mat

• Mat provides space between glass and paper
• Window mat shows clean border
• Use acid-free materials throughout
• Glass or acrylic glazing

Floating Paper in Frame Contemporary alternative showing torn or deckled edges:

• Mounted with archival hinges
• Spacers keep paper from touching glass
• Shows full sheet including edges

Mat Considerations Standard mat width runs 2-4 inches, in white, off-white, or a neutral. Use 100% cotton rag board, which is archival. Regular cardboard is acidic and will burn a brown line into the paper within a few years, so it never belongs anywhere near work you intend to sell.

Glass and Glazing Options

When to use what:

• Regular glass: Budget framing, temporary display
• Museum glass: Valuable works, permanent display, sales
• Acrylic: Shipping, large works (lighter weight), safety

Glazing also decides how hard the piece is to photograph. Regular glass throws a reflection of your entire studio back at the camera, which is why so much artwork documentation gets shot before the work goes into a frame. If you have to photograph framed work, museum glass or a polarizing filter is the difference between usable images and a portfolio full of your own silhouette.

For Photography

Photography framing follows similar rules to works on paper:

• Mat border is standard
• Museum glass reduces reflections
• Face-mounted to acrylic is contemporary option
• Consider print lifespan in material choices

DIY vs Professional Framing

Framing your own work is much cheaper and puts the timeline in your hands, and if you're producing at volume in standard sizes it's worth learning. The tradeoff is time, equipment, a real quality ceiling, and nobody to make it right when it goes wrong. For studio stock, student and emerging budgets, and anything in a standard size, that tradeoff usually favors doing it yourself.

Professional framing buys expertise, archival materials, custom sizes, and a guarantee, at a cost that will surprise you the first time. It's the right call for gallery shows, sales to collectors, anything on paper, and any work valuable enough that a mistake is expensive. Most working artists end up doing both: DIY for the studio, professional for the show.

Framing Costs Breakdown

Typical professional framing costs:

Factors affecting cost: frame material, glass type, complexity, mat options.

Gallery Presentation Standards

Most galleries expect consistent framing within a series, professional quality, work that arrives ready to hang, and frames that are clean and undamaged. Ask about their preferences before you spend anything. A gallery that hangs everything in white maple is not going to be pleased with your black float frames, and finding that out after the invoice is a painful way to learn it.

In practice the safe choices are narrow: black or white float frames, natural wood in oak, maple, or walnut, plain gallery frames, or unframed canvas with finished edges. What gets work turned away is ornate or decorative molding, anything that pulls the eye off the piece, visible damage, and mismatched frames across a series that's meant to hang together.

Juried and open-call submissions are stricter still, since they usually publish exact presentation requirements and enforce them. Read the specs before you frame anything for a juried show, and check them again against whatever you're preparing for a gallery exhibition. Programs on Artsume's open opportunities list their presentation and delivery requirements on the listing itself, which is the cheapest possible time to find out that they only accept unframed work.

Framing for Sales

Should You Frame Before Selling?

Framing first makes the work look finished and takes a decision off the buyer's plate, and framed pieces can carry a higher price. It also ties up capital in inventory, guesses at a preference the buyer may not share, makes shipping harder and more expensive, and adds a fragile thing that can arrive broken.

The middle ground most artists land on is to sell unframed and offer framing as a paid add-on, while showing the work framed in portfolio and listing images so buyers can picture it on a wall. That keeps the presentation strong in your portfolio images without committing you to a frame for every piece in the studio, and it's why so much work sold online ships flat or rolled.

Framing and Pricing

If the frame is included, price it deliberately rather than absorbing it. Frame cost plus a 50-100% markup is the common approach; a flat framing add-on works too. Either way, be explicit about what the buyer is getting. Frames are one of the material costs that quietly eat margin when you price your artwork without accounting for them.

Conservation Considerations

For works meant to last, materials matter.

Archival Materials

• Acid-free mats and backing
• UV-filtering glass
• Conservation mounting techniques
• Proper sealing

Environmental Factors

• Avoid direct sunlight
• Control humidity
• Proper hanging hardware
• Regular inspection

Reversibility

Conservation framing should be reversible, meaning the work can come out of the frame without damage. Dry mounting, permanent adhesives, and tape are the usual culprits, and they permanently reduce what a piece is worth. This matters more as prices climb, and it's worth understanding alongside insuring the work: both are about what the piece is still worth in twenty years.

Shipping Framed Work

Glass and long-distance transit are a bad combination. Many artists ship unframed and have the work framed at the destination, or switch to acrylic glazing for anything traveling far. If the frame does have to travel, corner protectors, a glass-taping pass, and a double box are the minimum. The full packing method for both framed and unframed pieces is in the guide to shipping artwork safely.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Framing decisions come down to matching the frame to the work and the venue, using archival materials on anything you want to survive, staying consistent across a series, and budgeting for it before you're standing at the framer's counter.

None of that requires expensive taste. It requires deciding in advance, which is also true of the portfolio images the frame ends up in, and of the profile you send when a gallery asks to see more.