How to Frame Your Art

There are many opinions as to what constitutes great framing for a particular piece of art.

There are also no hard and fast rules as framing, like art, is very subjective.

This is why we've created our Online-Framing Gallery so that you can play with your frame and mountboard choices until you find what works for you!

For us, Perfect Framing takes your eye from the Frame to the Art and then leaves you there – admiring what you're framing – Art that Works for you. With this in mind, please read our Hints and Tips below:

workART's Hints and Tips

We start by picking a frame profile that works for the art, examples being:

• our white or black boxes work well with modern, abstract and classical pieces where a contemporary look is required. These are very popular at the moment.

• gold frames work well with many classical pieces to give a more antique feeling. Gold also matches well with many colours making this an excellent choice.

• mahogany and the other dark woods are timeless and classically elegant and remain the most popular way to frame most art works.

• silver frames are great for black and whites. If in doubt as to what to try go silver!

• the workART Online-Framing Application has grouped our frames by colour and by the most popular to make the selection of your frame easier

Next stage is to decide on the mountboards:

• Start with the background colour, this will usually be a light colour that compliments the picture. If you find that you keep being drawn from the picture to the mountboard then that colour is probably wrong

• The background colour will be the only colour if you have 1 mountboard

• The preferred method of really showing off your art is to have 3 mountboards, where the background colour will be the same for the first and third mountboards

• The middle mountboard colour should be chosen to compliment the frame and not the art

• in the workART Online-Framing Application you can change the width of your mountboard up to our maximum width. Playing around with this aspect makes a massive difference to the framed appearance of your artwork

• if the workART Online-Framing Application does not allow you to put in a mountboard it is because your image size has exceeded the maximum mountboard size that we can accommodate

Classical framers will say that you never frame with the water or sky!

workART Framing Quality

All the frame mouldings that we use and the mountboards are of the same high quality that you will find in any reputable framing shop.

Where indicated our frames are “eco-friendly” meaning that they are made from recycled materials and can themselves be recycled.

Our frames that are marked as “Proudly South African” have been manufactured in South Africa. Please help support our local manufacturing industry.

You design your frame to suit your chosen artwork. This means that all our frames are bespoke and handmade specially for you.

All workART frames are of the highest quality; sealed at the back to stop dust entering and with all the necessary hanging fittings.

You just need to unpack your frame and it's ready to hang on your wall.