Framed or unframed — which to buy, and what it really costs.

Conventions, not rules. The proportions here are what galleries and interior designers have settled on because they work in most rooms. They are a starting point, not a law.

The one about postage

Start here, because it drives everything else.

A print travels beautifully. Rolled in a tube or flat between boards it is light, it is robust, and if the worst happens it can be reprinted and posted again for very little. A framed print travels badly. It is heavy, it is rigid, it has glazing in it, and the packaging that protects it costs more than the print inside.

This is why almost every print sold online arrives unframed, and it is not a cost-cutting exercise. Sending framed art across Australia means paying substantially more freight to increase the chance of damage. Where framing is offered on a print sold online, you are usually paying a premium for the privilege of a riskier parcel.

What framing actually costs

Three tiers, and the gap between them is wide.

• Off-the-shelf A-series frames. Commonly stocked in Australian department and office suppliers in A4, A3 and A2, at a fraction of the price of anything custom. This is what most people should buy, and the reason our prints are sold in A-series sizes rather than the American inch sizes.
• Ready-made frames from a framer. Better mouldings and better glazing in standard sizes. A real step up in feel for a moderate step up in price.
• Custom framing. Cut to your piece, with a mat you choose and glazing you specify. Routinely several times the price of the artwork — sometimes a great deal more.

The honest ratio for most people buying a print: the frame will cost more than the print. Knowing that in advance changes which size you buy.

When custom framing earns its money

It genuinely does, in four situations.

1. The piece is valuable or irreplaceable. An original, a signed limited edition, something with history. Conservation framing exists to stop the artwork degrading and it is worth the money on something you cannot reprint.
2. The size is non-standard. If it will not fit an off-the-shelf frame, you are choosing between custom framing and trimming the artwork.
3. It is going somewhere hostile. Bright light, a bathroom, a coastal house. UV-filtering glazing and a properly sealed back are doing real work in those rooms.
4. It is the focal point of the room. One large piece over a fireplace can carry the framing budget that six smaller ones cannot.

Everywhere else, an off-the-shelf frame with the print sitting properly in it looks considerably better than most people expect, and nobody standing in your living room is auditing the moulding.

The mat, which is the thing most people get wrong

A mat — the card border between the artwork and the frame — does two useful things. It keeps the paper off the glass, which matters over time, and it gives the eye somewhere to rest before the artwork starts. A matted A3 in an A2 frame reads as a far more considered object than a bare A3 in an A3 frame, for the price of a piece of card.

The catch is that it changes which frame you need, and it is where most of the sizing mistakes happen. That arithmetic — and the near-miss sizes that stop a print fitting at all — is on the print sizes page.

Unframed does not have to mean bare

There is a middle route that avoids both the freight problem and the frame bill: magnetic timber hangers top and bottom, a bulldog clip on a nail, a clipboard, a picture ledge with the print leaning against the wall. All of them are light, none of them involve glass, all of them suit a rental, and several of them look better in a relaxed room than a formal frame does.

So which

Artsby sells prints unframed, in A-series sizes, for the reasons above: the parcel is safer, the postage is included, and the frame you buy locally will cost you less than we could sell you one for.