How to Personalise your Frame

Perhaps you’ve browsed all your local homeware and interior shops for the perfect frame for your artwork without much luck. None of the plain square or rectangle-shaped designs fit the bill, and you want something more individual that suits your taste, art and home décor. In this situation, going down the bespoke, hand-finished path is a great way to get a unique, personalised picture frame you have your heart set on. Personalisation can be as simple as changing the colours or something more complex like carving a design from scratch. Here are some ways the team here at Soho Frames can make your frame unique.

1. Pick a different shape

Most standard off-the-shelf frames lack options and individuality — you’ll spot a lot of different sized rectangle designs since this is the most common shape. Choosing something more unconventional offers an element of personalisation while adding flair to your home. We can frame anything in almost any shape, including triangle, round, and even trapezium styles. Triangle frames are particularly unique as multiple images can be slotted together to make a beautiful octagon shaped display. We’ve even created a special music design shaped like Africa inspired by Toto’s song, which showcases just how wide-ranging our unique frames are.

Indeed, any good frame shop offers a wide selection of frames to give customers plenty of choice to suit their tastes and artwork specifications. These designs are called moulds in the industry, and arrive to us from various suppliers after being manufactured abroad. Some of these moulds are made in factories in Italy and Germany, while the rest we craft ourselves, designing the profile shape and constructing the wood for it, or milling it. This last method enables us to build the frame from scratch, making it as wide, high or curved as the client wants (within technical boundaries, of course). We can also adapt standard frame profiles to ensure what we create is exactly right for the customer.

2. Opt for a larger photo mat

Photo mats — a thin, flat piece of material included within the frame — can add an extra pop to your artwork, as well as separate it from the glass. Matting is a simple way of updating your art’s appearance without having to replace the whole frame. When it comes to personalising your design, there are multiple matting options. Increasing the size of your photo mat, for example, leaves more white space around the art to create a more dramatic display. Whereas patterned mats help personalise your art, though you don’t want to go overboard with pattern and texture just to make something more ‘you’.

3. Choose a colour and finish

Our process of designing and building custom frames enables us to change the colour of the structure if desired, as well as the finish, even if your frame is made in a standard mould. If a client likes a certain design, but wants it to be a little darker or lighter, we can do that. Or if a customer requests an unusual shade like bright pink, this is also possible. We have a variety of finishes available too, including woodgrain, matt, satin, smooth and fine metallic foil — all of which have their own distinctive style. Even if you think your idea is unusual, we’re happy to create a frame that fits your brief.

4. Sketch your own design

There’s very few limitations at Soho Frames in terms of what we can do for your artwork. Any unique vision can be brought to life thanks to our team’s framing expertise and experience. Perhaps you’ve got an abstract idea for your frame that’s hard to detail verbally. If this happens, we recommend sketching your vision onto paper to give us a better idea of what you want — plenty of clients have done this in the past. This is the ultimate form of personalisation, as your ideas are likely to be uniquely yours. Realistically, no one else will have the exact same image in mind as you.