Three Framing Choices That Make Floral Prints Look Expensive

Most floral prints don't look cheap because of the print itself. They look cheap because of what's around them: a mat that's too skinny, a frame that fights the artwork, and glazing that shifts every red toward orange. Fix those three things and even a modest print starts reading like something you picked up at a small gallery.

Why framing does more heavy lifting than the print

Walk into any well-designed room with art on the walls and squint. The first thing you register is proportion: how much breathing room the artwork has, how the frame relates to the wall, how light hits the surface. Only after that do you start reading the image itself.

That order matters. It means the framing decisions you make around a floral print carry more visual weight than the print's price tag. A £15 botanical illustration with a wide mat and a considered oak frame will out-perform a £200 print jammed edge-to-edge into a glossy black frame every time.

The three decisions that do the work: mat width, frame colour and finish, and glazing. Get those right and the print looks expensive. Get any one of them wrong and it doesn't matter what else you've done.

Decision one: mat width

If you only change one thing about how you frame floral prints, make it the mat. Mat width is the single strongest signal of perceived value in framed art, and most people get it wrong by a factor of two.

The measurements that matter

Here's the rule we work to:

• Budget look (avoid): 1 to 3cm mat, or no mat at all.
• Standard retail look: 3 to 5cm mat. Fine. Nothing special.
• Gallery look: 5 to 8cm mat. This is where things start feeling considered.
• Museum look: 8 to 12cm mat on larger prints. Serious breathing room.

For an A3 floral print (roughly 30x42cm), we'd aim for a 6 to 7cm mat all round, which means your outer frame dimension lands around 42x54cm. For an A2 print, push the mat to 7 or 8cm. On anything 50x70cm or larger, 8 to 10cm mats start to look properly museum-grade.

Why this works

Wide mats do two things. They separate the artwork from the surrounding wall so your eye locks onto the image, and they signal that whoever framed this cared enough to buy more material than strictly necessary. Both readings register as "expensive" before your brain has processed why.

Botanical illustrations especially benefit from generous mats. The detailed line work and pale backgrounds of most botanical art prints need space to breathe. Crush them into a narrow mat and the detail becomes noise.

The weighted bottom mat trick

For a properly traditional botanical look, weight the bottom mat by 5 to 15mm. So if your top and sides are 70mm, your bottom mat is 75 to 85mm. This mimics how art has been framed in museums for centuries. Your eye reads the print as sitting slightly higher in the frame, which feels more grounded and formal.

It's subtle. Most people won't spot what you've done. They'll just register that the framing looks right.

Double matting for painterly florals

If you're framing something more painterly, a soft watercolour peony, an abstract floral, or a lush oil-style bloom, consider a double mat with a 5 to 8mm accent reveal in a colour drawn from the print itself.

A sage green or dusty rose reveal under a cream primary mat picks up the artwork without competing with it. Keep the accent mat narrow. The moment it becomes more than 10mm it starts to look busy.

Decision two: frame colour and finish

Frame colour is where most people default to whatever's cheapest, and it shows. The right frame colour depends entirely on the style of floral print you're framing, so start by identifying what you actually have.

Match the frame to the print style

Vintage botanical illustrations (think 19th century lithographs, seed catalogue art, Redouté-style rose plates): natural oak or ash in a matte finish. The warm wood tone flatters the aged paper look and cream backgrounds. Avoid anything too dark, it makes the print look muddy.

Modern watercolour florals (loose brushwork, pale washes, contemporary illustration): natural oak, pale ash, or a warm off-white. These prints already have softness built in and need a frame that doesn't add weight.

High-contrast graphic florals (bold colour blocks, black outlines, pop-art style blooms): matte black or a very dark walnut. This is one of the few times black earns its place. The contrast supports the graphic quality of the print.

Painterly or oil-style florals (rich colour, textured brushwork, moody backgrounds): soft warm gold, aged brass, or a deep walnut. Gold especially works with the old-master feel of these prints, but keep the finish matte or lightly brushed. Anything shiny reads as costume jewellery.

Photographic flower prints: thin matte black or thin natural oak. Photography needs a frame that disappears.

Finish matters more than you think

Matte beats glossy nearly every time. Glossy frames reflect light unevenly, catch fingerprints, and read as plastic even when they aren't. A matte finish absorbs light, hides small imperfections, and looks more expensive because it looks less manufactured.

Solid wood frames also win over anything with a printed woodgrain veneer or MDF core, and the difference is visible from across the room. The weight, the way the corners join, and the depth of the moulding all give it away. Every Fab framed print uses solid FSC-certified wood for exactly this reason, because the frame is doing half the work.

Avoid the ornate trap

Ornate carved frames on delicate florals almost always misfire. The frame ends up competing with the artwork, and both lose. If you want a decorative frame, save it for something bold enough to hold its own: a large-scale painterly bouquet, a rich still life, an oversized abstract floral. Never a small botanical study.

Decision three: glazing

Glazing is the decision most people don't think about at all, which is a shame, because it's where budget framing quietly destroys otherwise good prints.

What standard glass does to florals

Regular float glass has a slight green tint and, more importantly, no UV protection. Over months and years, sunlight will shift reds toward orange, greens toward grey, and yellows toward brown. Florals suffer worst because they rely on the full colour spectrum to feel alive.

Even in a room without direct sun, ambient UV will fade a print noticeably within a few years. You'll rarely spot it happening because the change is gradual. You'll only notice when you take the print down and see the vivid original colour underneath where the frame was covering it.

The acrylic argument

UV-protective acrylic glazing solves the fading problem, weighs a fraction of glass, and doesn't shatter. For large flower prints at 70x100cm or bigger, glass becomes genuinely dangerous. A frame that heavy dropping off a wall is a serious hazard.

Our framed prints use UV-protective acrylic as standard, which means the museum-grade giclée inks (already rated to last hundreds of years) stay true even in bright rooms. It's the sort of detail that doesn't sell itself in a product photo but matters five years in.

The anti-glare question

Non-glare glazing scatters reflections but slightly softens the image. For florals with fine detail, the trade-off usually isn't worth it. You'd rather deal with occasional reflection than a permanently hazy print. If glare is a real problem in your space, address it by moving the print rather than compromising the glazing.

The custom mat hack

Here's the tactic that changes everything for anyone framing budget prints.

Buy a standard frame in a size 5 to 8cm larger on each side than your print. Then order a custom-cut mat with an aperture sized to your print. A custom mat cut to fit costs roughly £15 to £30 depending on size. A fully custom-framed print typically starts at £150 and climbs fast.

So a £20 print, in a £40 off-the-shelf frame, with a £25 custom mat, gives you an £85 result that reads as £250 framing. The mat does the work.

The only catch: buy the frame first, then order the mat to fit both the frame's outer dimensions and the print's inner dimensions. Getting those measurements wrong is the most common mistake, and it's an expensive one because custom mats aren't returnable.

If this feels like too much faff, our framed prints ship with the print already fitted, mat included, frame properly joined, acrylic glazing in place, fixtures attached. One box, ready to hang, no measuring.

Common mistakes that make prints look cheaper

A quick checklist of what to actively avoid:

Cropping the print to fit a frame you already own. You'll lose the composition. Buy the right size frame or resize the mat aperture instead.

Skipping the mat. No mat is almost always worse than a narrow mat, which is worse than a proper mat. Mat-less framing only works for full-bleed photographic prints or canvas.

Mixing frame woods in a gallery wall. Pick one wood tone and commit. Three oak frames look considered. One oak, one walnut, and one pine looks accidental.

Using ornate frames on small delicate prints. Save decorative frames for larger, bolder work.

Ignoring the print style. A vintage botanical in a matte black frame looks awkward. A graphic modern floral in soft gold looks confused. Match the frame to the artwork's era and mood.

Hanging too high. Centre of the artwork should sit at roughly 145 to 150cm from the floor. Higher than that and the print floats. Lower and it looks slumped.

The across-the-room test

Before you commit to a framing choice, do this: prop the framed print (or a mock-up) against the wall where it'll hang. Walk to the opposite side of the room. Turn around.

If your eye goes to the frame first, the frame is wrong. If your eye goes to the mat first, the mat is wrong. If your eye goes to the print and stays there, everything is working.

This test cuts through the fussy detail-level thinking that traps most people. It doesn't matter what looks good with your nose 30cm from the artwork. What matters is how it reads from where you'll actually be sitting.

When archival materials matter

If you're framing an original piece, a signed limited edition, or anything with genuine investment value, use acid-free mats, archival mounting tape, and UV-protective glazing without exception.

If you're framing an open-edition print of a garden scene or a botanical study, you can relax slightly on the mounting tape but don't compromise on the mat or the glazing. Acidic mats will yellow and eventually stain the print, which is a slow, ugly failure mode. Spending an extra £5 on an acid-free mat is worth it every time.

Our garden art prints are printed on thick museum-grade matte paper with water-based inks, so the print itself is archival from the start. Pairing that with an acid-free mat and UV acrylic gives you a piece that will still look right in twenty years.

Where to start

If you're framing a floral print today, work in this order. Identify the print style first (vintage, modern, painterly, graphic, photographic). Choose your frame colour from that. Then size your mat generously, 5 to 8cm minimum, weighted at the bottom. Finally, insist on UV-protective glazing.

Do those four things in that order and you'll never end up with framing that fights the artwork. Skip any of them and you'll spend the next year wondering why the print never quite looks right.