A passepartout — a mat, a mount, depending on who you ask — is the board between the artwork and the frame. It is the single fastest way to make a print look like it came from a gallery rather than a tube. It is also the thing customers most often misunderstand, so let us start with the part that matters.
A mat makes the artwork smaller, not the picture bigger
The size you order is the size of the whole framed piece on your wall. It always is. Adding a mat does not push the outside dimensions outward; it takes space from the inside.
So a 50×70 cm order with a mat gives you a 50×70 cm frame on the wall, with a 40×50 cm print inside it and mount board around that. Both versions occupy exactly the same rectangle of wall. One has more artwork; the other has more breathing room.
We print the artwork one size down on purpose, so it fits the mount window properly instead of being trimmed to fit. Your cart tells you the printed size before you pay, so there is no surprise when the parcel opens.
When a mat is worth it
- Small prints. An A4 or 30×40 on a big wall reads as an afterthought. A mat gives it presence without you paying for a larger print.
- Busy or edge-to-edge artwork. Prints where the image runs right to the border need somewhere for the eye to rest before the frame.
- Gallery walls. Matting the smaller pieces and leaving the anchor unmatted is a trick that makes a mixed-size arrangement look deliberate. We use it in the bedroom wall.
- Anything you want to feel expensive. Mounts read as considered. It is the cheapest upgrade in framing.
When to skip it
- Big statement prints. At 70×100 and up the artwork already commands the wall. A mat just shrinks what you paid for.
- Posters that are meant to be posters. Vintage travel and typographic prints usually want to fill the frame — the design already has its own margin built in.
- Tight walls. If the wall can only take 30×40, use all 30×40 for artwork.
Choosing the colour
White is the default for a reason: it disappears and lets the artwork speak. Freja, our warm off-white, does the same job on cream or clay-coloured walls where a bright white mount would look cold.
Coloured mounts are a deliberate move, not a decoration. The rule that works: pick a colour already inside the artwork, and pick a quiet one rather than the loudest. A muted green mount under a botanical, a deep teal under a seascape. A black mount is dramatic and unforgiving — wonderful under graphic, high-contrast prints, heavy under anything soft.
We cut mats from acid-free board in eleven colours: white, black, Freja, grey, green, light blue, lilac, orange, red, teal and yellow.
How to decide in thirty seconds
Open any print, pick your size, and switch the mat on and off. The preview above the size selector redraws the whole thing to scale, mount width and all — and that preview is the same drawing we use to explain it in the FAQ. If it looks better with, order it with.