How to Frame Your Fine Art Print: A Collector's Guide to Display and Preservation

The right frame does more than protect your investment — it completes it. Whether you have acquired a screen print, a 1/1 original, or a giclée print, how you frame it determines both how it lives in your space today and how well it survives to be passed on.

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Choosing a Frame Style

A box frame, or shadow frame, sets the artwork back from the glass, creating depth and a small reveal of shadow around the edges. This style suits limited edition screen prints particularly well — the deckled paper edges and hand-finished details are part of the work's character, and a box frame gives them room to be seen.

A standard frame offers a cleaner, more minimal presentation, well suited to contemporary interiors. It is the more common choice for giclée prints, where the priority is colour fidelity and image clarity rather than the texture of the substrate.

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Frame Thickness and Weight

A thicker profile feels architectural and substantial — the right choice for larger format works that need a frame with visual presence to match. A slimmer profile creates a lighter, more refined appearance, better suited to smaller prints where you want the image, not the frame, to hold the attention. For New Zealand-based collectors, the FOFFA framing guide offers a useful reference for matching frame weight to print size.

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Floating the Paper

Floating reveals the deckled edge of the sheet and puts the paper itself on display — a presentation choice that only makes sense when the paper is worth looking at. It is particularly well suited to limited edition prints and giclée works, where the substrate is part of the artwork's value. Sam Leitch's screen prints are produced on Fabriano Artistico cotton art paper, which makes floating an especially fitting way to present them — the paper's texture and edge become part of what you are framing, not just what you are framing onto.

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Frame Colour

White delivers a gallery-style finish that suits the majority of contemporary prints and works well across most interiors. Black offers more contrast and graphic weight; natural timber brings warmth and suits spaces with existing wood tones. The right choice is less about a rule and more about what the frame should do in your specific room — recede, or participate.

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Hanging Hardware

D-rings are recommended for heavier works, including larger giclée prints on substantial paper stock, where the framed weight demands a more secure fixing. String or wire suits lighter pieces, such as smaller screen prints.

Whichever you choose, ensure the hardware is rated for the weight of the finished, framed piece — not just the print itself. Your local framer can advise on the right fixing for your wall type and the size of the work.

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Glass: The Detail Most Collectors Underestimate

Standard glass is clear and protective, a solid choice for prints displayed away from direct light. But for anything near a window or in a well-lit room, anti-reflective, UV-protective glass is worth the additional cost. UV exposure is one of the primary causes of colour degradation in fine art prints over time, and the Getty Conservation Institute's research on light exposure makes clear how much of a print's long-term value depends on this single decision.

A beautifully made print, framed without UV protection in a sunlit room, will fade. The frame is not a finishing touch — it is part of the print's preservation.

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Framing as an Extension of Collecting

A print bought without thought to its framing is only half collected. The choices outlined here — frame style, thickness, paper presentation, glass — are not aesthetic afterthoughts. They are the difference between a print that holds its value and integrity for decades and one that quietly degrades on the wall.

If you are choosing a frame for a piece you already own, these principles will guide you well. And if you are still choosing the work itself, the collection is where to start.