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Custom Matting Services in Vancouver

Matting can completely change the look of a framed piece. It adds breathing room around your artwork, helps guide the eye, creates depth, and provides important protection by keeping artwork away from the glass. At Framagraphic, we offer custom matting solutions designed to suit your style, your space, and the piece you want to display.

Whether you are framing family photos, certificates, artwork, jerseys, or keepsakes, the right mat can make all the difference.

Art Matting in Vancouver

Why Matting Matters

Many people assume matting is only there for decoration, but it plays an important role in both the appearance and protection of your framed piece. A well-chosen mat enhances the overall presentation of artwork by creating space around the image and drawing attention to the details within it. It helps create visual balance inside the frame, making the final piece feel more polished and intentional.

Matting also prevents artwork from resting directly against the glass, which can help reduce moisture damage, sticking, or long-term wear. Beyond function, mats can introduce colour, contrast, or texture that complements your artwork and surrounding décor.

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Multiple Mats for Added Style and Depth

Enhance depth and color with precision layering.

Using more than one mat is one of the most popular ways to create a refined custom look. Double matting is a classic choice, where one mat sits on top of another and reveals a slim border of colour beneath. Triple matting or layered designs can add even more depth and personality.

  • Double Matting: The industry standard for professional framing, providing a 1/8″ to 1/4″ accent border.

  • Triple Matting & Beyond: Adds significant visual weight and luxury, often used for high-value fine art and prestigious certificates.

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Tell a story with collage-style layouts

Custom Multi-Opening Mats

Our computer-guided mat cutters allow for infinite customization. We can design layouts for multiple images, objects, or text plaques within a single frame.

  • Precision Geometry: Choose from standard squares and rectangles or elegant ovals and circles.
  • Decorative Specialty Cuts: Add personality with scalloped edges, bell-shaped openings, or thematic shapes like hearts, alphabet letters, or the Canadian maple leaf.
  • Applications: Perfect for family photo galleries, corporate awards, and sports memorabilia displays.
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Add a tactile dimension to your display

Premium Textures: Fabric & Metallic Mats

Texture plays a vital role in interior design. By choosing a specialty mat surface, you can harmonize the frame with the medium of the artwork.

  • Linen & Suede Mats: These offer a soft, matte finish that absorbs light. Suede mats are particularly effective for shadowboxes containing medals or textiles, as the deep pile creates a rich backdrop for woven ribbons.
  • Leather Mats: Provide a masculine, rugged, or high-end office aesthetic.
  • Metallic Accents: Gold, silver, and copper metallic mats are used as “fillet-style” accents to highlight foil stamps on diplomas, wedding invitations, or silver-gelatin photography.
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Visual depth meets archival protection

Raised Matting for Art Preservation

Raised matting involves placing archival foamcore spacers between mat layers. This creates a physical “step” or shadow-box effect within the matting itself.

Why choose a raised mat?

  1. For Fragile Media: We highly recommend raised mats for pastel, charcoal, and pencil drawings.
  2. Pigment Protection: By creating a gap, we ensure the mat never touches the delicate surface of the painting, preventing smudging or pigment transfer.
  3. The “Dust” Channel: For pastels, this gap allows microscopic pigment dust to fall naturally to the bottom of the frame, unseen rather than getting trapped between the mat and the glass.
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Showcase the beauty of the paper edge

Float Mounting: Flush & Raised

For artwork with unique textures, such as handmade paper with deckled edges or art that extends to the very edge of the sheet, traditional matting would hide the best parts. Float mounting solves this by sitting the art on top of the mat.

  • Flush Floating: The artwork is archivally hinged flat against the backing mat for a clean, modern look.
  • Raised Floating (3D Float): We lift the artwork off the mat using a hidden archival riser. This casts a natural shadow onto the background, giving the art a dramatic, “hovering” appearance.
  • Archival Integrity: All our floating techniques use reversible, non-invasive hinging methods that maintain the value of your original art.
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Expert Custom Framing Near You

Located in the heart of Vancouver, Framagraphic combines traditional craftsmanship with modern technology. Whether you need a simple photo mat or a complex multi-opening shadowbox, our team ensures every cut is perfect. Contact us for a personalized consultation or a professional quote.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Custom Matting

The primary difference lies in the chemical composition. Standard paper mats often contain lignin, which turns acidic over time and causes “mat burn” (yellowing) on your artwork. At Framagraphic, we use acid-free and lignin-free alpha-cellulose or 100% cotton rag mats. These are pH-neutral, ensuring your art remains preserved and discoloration-free for decades.

Typically, a mat opening is cut 1/8″ to 1/4″ smaller than the dimensions of your image. This overlap is necessary to secure the artwork to the back of the mat and prevent the edges from peeking through. If you wish to see the entire image or a signature at the bottom, we recommend a “weighted” bottom or a float mount.

Float mounting is ideal for artwork with deckled (hand-torn) edges, or pieces where the artist’s signature or important details go right to the edge of the paper. It is also a popular choice for 3D textiles, thick heavy-weight paper, or historic documents where you want to showcase the physical object in its entirety rather than hiding the edges behind a mat window.

No. When we perform a raised float or use raised matting, we install frame spacers (hidden plastic or wood strips) along the inside edge of the frame. This creates a safe air gap between the glass (glazing) and the artwork. This is critical for preventing moisture trapped in the air from causing the art to stick to the glass, which can lead to mold or permanent damage.

A triple mat adds significant visual depth and is often used to create a “tunnel” effect that draws the eye into the piece. It allows for more complex color play. For example, using two neutral outer mats with a very thin, vibrant “middle” mat that picks up a specific color in the artwork. It also creates a thicker physical barrier, which provides a high-end, gallery-quality aesthetic.

Dry mounting is a process that uses heat and pressure to flatten an image permanently against a backing board. While great for posters or photographs that tend to ripple, we do not recommend dry mounting for original art, limited editions, or high-value items, as the process is usually irreversible and can decrease the artwork’s value. For those pieces, we use archival hinging or corner pockets.

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