A good print in a bad frame looks like a poster. The same print in the right frame looks like it came off a museum wall. Here is the short, practical version of what matters.
1. Pick the size for the wall, not the print
Art should fill roughly two-thirds of the width of the furniture beneath it. Over a sofa (about 84 inches), that means a 24×36 or a pair of 16×24s. Over a desk or console, a 16×24 or 12×18. In a hallway or bathroom, 12×18 is plenty. All of our prints come in 12×18, 16×24, 20×30, and 24×36 (and the horizontal equivalents), which are standard frame sizes you can buy off the shelf.
2. Mat or no mat
Our prints already have a soft off-white border built in, so they look finished without a mat in a same-size frame. If you want the classic gallery look, buy a frame one size up and a mat with an opening about half an inch smaller than the print on each side — for a 12×18, a 16×20 frame with an 11×17 opening. White or cream mats suit botanicals; a warm white or pale grey suits Japanese prints.
3. Frame color
Japanese woodblock prints: thin black, walnut, or natural oak. Botanicals: thin gold, natural wood, or white. Black-ground pieces (Dietzsch, Delany): black or dark bronze. Keep frames thin — under an inch — so the art, not the frame, does the talking. If you’re hanging several, use the same frame for all of them.
4. Glass
Standard glass is fine in rooms without direct sun. If the wall gets afternoon light, UV-filtering acrylic or glass protects the color. Our prints use pigment inks on archival matte paper, which resist fading far better than dye-based posters, but no print is immune to years of direct sunlight.
5. Hanging
Center the print at eye level — about 57 inches from the floor to the middle of the frame. For a grid of three, leave 2 to 3 inches between frames. For a gallery wall, cut paper templates first and tape them up before touching a hammer.
6. Flattening a rolled print
Prints ship rolled in a tube. Unroll it on a clean table, lay it face down under a few heavy books overnight, and it will lie flat for framing. Never roll it the opposite way to “counter-curl” it.
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