The 10 Best Art Framing Supplies for Museum-Quality Results

Custom mat cutting is the single biggest markup at frame shops — a $3 piece of matboard routinely gets a $40 to $60 cutting fee. The Logan 450-1 eliminates that cost permanently. This is the mat cutter that professional framers reach for in their shops, and at home it transforms framing from an expensive service into an affordable skill.

The 40-inch cutting capacity handles every standard frame size with room to spare, and the dual-blade system lets you cut both the beveled window openings that mats require and straight-line trims for sizing board to fit. The production stop is invaluable when you're cutting multiple identical mats — set it once and every subsequent cut matches exactly. For estate collectors reframing a dozen or more pieces, this feature alone saves hours.

The learning curve is real: your first few cuts will have ragged corners. The key is to start and stop the blade exactly at the pencil marks, applying even pressure throughout. Practice on scrap matboard before touching your good stock. After ten practice cuts, you'll be producing corners that match frame shop quality — and every mat after that is essentially free. Over ten pieces, this cutter saves $400 to $600 in cutting fees.

If you're framing five to ten pieces and want professional mat cuts without the professional price tag, the Logan 301-1 is the entry point. At around $55, it pays for itself after a single use — one custom mat at a frame shop typically costs $40 to $60, so your second mat is already pure savings.

The 301-1 cuts clean 45-degree bevels in standard 4-ply matboard, which is what 95% of framing projects require. The parallel guide ensures consistent border widths, and the open-end design is a clever feature: you can actually cut boards longer than 32 inches by sliding the matboard through the open end of the cutter. It's not as fast or precise as the 450-1 for large batches, but for occasional framing it's more than capable.

Our recommendation: if you're framing fewer than ten pieces and don't plan to frame regularly, start here. If you discover you enjoy the process — and many collectors do — upgrade to the 450-1 later. The 301-1 teaches you the fundamentals of mat cutting without a significant financial commitment, and the skills transfer directly to the larger cutter.

Matboard is where frame shops make their highest margins, and Crescent Select is the board they're cutting from. At $7 to $9 per 32x40 sheet, you get the exact same conservation-grade material that a frame shop charges $30 to $60 to cut for you. A single sheet yields two to four mats depending on your frame size, which means your per-mat cost drops to $2 to $4 — a 90% savings over retail cutting fees.

Conservation grade means acid-free, lignin-free, with a solid white core that won't yellow or transfer acids to your artwork over time. This matters enormously for any art you plan to keep, display, or sell. Cheap matboard from craft stores contains acids that cause foxing (brown spots) and yellowing within a few years — damage that's irreversible and devalues the artwork permanently.

For gallery presentation, classic white, off-white, and black account for 90% of what we use at Austin Gallery. Crescent Select comes in over 100 colors, but restraint is key — as Framebridge's Tessa Wolf puts it, "the whole idea of matting is to place even more focus on the art itself, so when it comes to choosing color, exercise restraint." Start with bright white or antique white, and you'll cover nearly every framing scenario.

If you're not ready to invest in a mat cutter but want archival-quality presentation, pre-cut mats are the smartest shortcut. At under $0.60 per mat in a 25-pack, you're getting acid-free, professionally beveled mats for a fraction of what a frame shop charges for the same result. For photographers, print sellers, and anyone working with standard frame sizes, these are indispensable.

The critical factor with pre-cut mats is that they must be acid-free. Cheap mats from craft stores will damage artwork within a few years — the acids in non-archival matboard migrate into the paper, causing brown spots (foxing) and yellowing that can't be reversed. Golden State Art mats are genuinely archival, with a white core and acid-free construction that meets conservation standards.

These work beautifully for prints, photographs, watercolors, and any work on paper in standard sizes. They're available in multiple dimensions (11x14, 16x20, and others), so you can batch-frame an entire series of same-sized works in an afternoon. For anyone preparing artwork for consignment or sale, a clean pre-cut mat in a good frame is often all you need to transform a casual print into a gallery-ready presentation.

Glass choice is the most consequential framing decision you'll make, and Tru Vue Museum Glass is the answer for any artwork you care about preserving. It blocks 99% of UV light while providing an anti-reflective coating so effective that you almost can't tell there's glass in the frame at all. Major museums worldwide — including MoMA, the Met, and the Smithsonian — trust their collections to Tru Vue, and there's no reason your framing should use anything less for valuable work.

The anti-reflective coating is what separates Museum Glass from cheaper UV-protective options. Regular glass creates glare that obscures the artwork, especially under overhead lighting. Conservation Clear glass (Tru Vue's mid-tier option) blocks UV but still reflects. Museum Glass does both — it protects the art and disappears visually. When you frame a piece with Museum Glass, viewers see the art, not the glass. The effect is dramatic and immediately noticeable.

Yes, it's expensive. At $40 to $80 per sheet depending on size, Museum Glass costs five to ten times more than regular glass. But compare that to the cost of UV damage — faded colors, yellowed paper, degraded pigments — that you can never undo. For artwork valued over $500, Museum Glass is a no-brainer. For less valuable pieces, Tru Vue's Conservation Clear ($20-30) provides UV protection without the anti-reflective coating.

Once your artwork, mat, glass, and backing are stacked inside the frame, something needs to hold them in place. The Fletcher FrameMaster is that something — it drives rigid metal flex points into the frame's rabbet (the inner lip that holds the stack), locking everything securely. This is the tool that every professional framing shop uses, and the difference between a FrameMaster and the amateur alternative (pushing diamond points in by hand with a screwdriver) is night and day.

The spring-loaded mechanism drives points cleanly and consistently with a squeeze of the handle. Each point bites into the wood of the frame and bends flat against the backing board, creating a secure mechanical lock. The risk of cracking the glass — which is real when you're pushing points in manually with uneven pressure — drops to essentially zero. A single tube of 3,000 refill points costs about $15, which means each point costs half a cent.

At around $55 for the driver plus $15 for your first tube of points, this is one of the best investments in the entire framing toolkit. It makes the assembly step — which can be the most anxiety-inducing part of framing when you've got expensive glass and valuable art in the stack — feel controlled and professional. If you're restoring or reusing vintage frames, this tool is especially essential.

Hinging tape is the invisible hero of proper framing. It attaches the artwork to the backing board or mat, holding the piece in position without adhesive touching the art's face or visible surface. Lineco's self-adhesive linen tape is the conservator's choice — acid-free, pH neutral, and strong enough to secure artwork reliably while remaining gentle enough to remove without tearing the paper.

The proper hinging technique uses two small pieces of tape: one folded into a T-hinge at the top edge of the artwork, the other securing the hinge to the backing board. This allows the artwork to hang naturally and expand or contract with humidity changes without buckling. Never tape all four edges of a work on paper — it needs room to breathe. Our framing team at Austin Gallery uses this exact tape on every work on paper we prepare for exhibition.

The self-adhesive formulation is a significant convenience upgrade over traditional water-activated linen tape. You tear a piece, fold it, press it in place — no water dish, no waiting for activation, no drying time. For purists working with extremely valuable works, water-activated Japanese tissue hinges remain the gold standard, but for 95% of framing scenarios this Lineco tape provides the right balance of archival safety and practical usability.

This is the step most DIY framers skip — and it's one of the first things an experienced gallery worker notices. Frame sealing tape creates a continuous dust seal around the perimeter of the backing board, closing the gap between the backing and the frame rabbet. Without it, dust, insects, and moisture slowly infiltrate the frame package and settle on the glass and artwork. With it, the interior stays clean for years.

Application is straightforward: cut strips to length, press them along each edge of the backing board so they overlap onto the frame, and smooth them down firmly. The key is to work carefully — wrinkled, crooked sealing tape looks amateur and defeats the purpose. Take your time, start with a corner, and work your way around. The self-adhesive backing grips firmly to both the backing board and the frame's wood or metal finish.

At roughly $11 for an 85-foot roll, this is one of the cheapest products on the list but has an outsized impact on the longevity and perceived quality of your framing. It's the difference between a frame that looks like it was assembled at a kitchen table and one that looks like it came from a professional shop. Apply it to every frame you assemble, every time. No exceptions.

What goes behind the artwork matters almost as much as what goes in front of it. Every framed piece needs a rigid backing board, and that board must be acid-free. Regular foam core from the office supply store contains acids that slowly migrate through the mat and into the artwork, causing foxing (brown spots) and yellowing that accumulate invisibly over years and can never be reversed.

Viewpoint's acid-free foam boards are the standard backing material for conservation framing. The rigid foam core provides the structural support that holds the entire frame stack — glass, mat, artwork, backing — flat and secure. The acid-free construction ensures no chemical migration into your art. Pre-cut sizes match common frame dimensions, which eliminates the need to buy full 32x40 sheets and cut them down (though you can buy full sheets and cut with a utility knife for non-standard sizes).

This is a non-negotiable material for any artwork you care about. The price difference between archival and regular foam core is typically $2 to $5 per piece — a negligible cost compared to the artwork it's protecting. When we prepare pieces for consignment at Austin Gallery, archival backing is one of our minimum standards. Buyers notice, and properly backed pieces command more confidence and higher prices.

Archival tissue is the framing supply nobody thinks about until they need it — and by then, the damage is done. Use it between the artwork and the mat during framing. Use it between stacked framed pieces during storage. Use it to wrap unframed works before placing them in archival boxes. Every time two surfaces touch, there's a risk of scratching, sticking, acid transfer, or moisture damage. A sheet of acid-free tissue between them eliminates that risk.

This is not the tissue paper from the gift wrap aisle. Archival tissue is buffered to a neutral pH and manufactured to be lignin-free, meaning it won't generate acids over time the way regular paper products do. The Northeast Document Conservation Center recommends acid-free interleaving tissue as a fundamental storage material for any works on paper — and Lineco is the brand most conservators reach for.

At under $15 for a pack that lasts through dozens of projects, this is one of the cheapest forms of art insurance you can buy. We keep rolls of it at Austin Gallery and use it liberally — between every piece in storage, inside every shipping package, and as a protective layer during framing assembly. It's the kind of invisible care that prevents the kind of damage you don't notice until it's too late to fix.