Buy picture frames made to measure

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Asking your bespoke framer for made-to-measure frames.

When you think of ready-frames you do not immediately think about made to measure frames made by your local bespoke picture framer. How wrong can we be! Your local picture framer should be your first port of call. They should be only too happy to make you some ready frames. If they aren’t, never go back to them! It’s a simple equation!

The time taken in finishing a frame to the standards that customers demand, involves, cleaning the glass, taping it up, checking for dust, and that is all a time-consuming job. In fact, it’s probably 50% of the overall time taken.

Picture framers make much of their bread-and-butter money from bulk framing and often have plenty of mouldings left over. They should be only too pleased to make you a ready frame out of some offcuts and at a very reasonable price. If you go armed with a price of an equivalent frame you have seen online, they should be only too happy to match or undercut the price of online frames.

Another way to please your framer is to order multiple frames of the same size. This reduces their labour costs considerably. Take this into account when ordering your frames, you might be able to tinker with odd-sized images to make them all fit the same sized frame.

Picture framers buy moulding in lengths, (in the past they were forced to buy packs of lengths), but even today it involves a fair amount of wastage. The framer’s margins are small. They will calculate the moulding purchase cost and then calculate the time needed to make the frames to come up with a price. So ordering frames in quantities greater than single units is more cost-effective for the framer. With less waste and the lower unit cost, prices can fall.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, if you are after a ready frame, instead of buying one online, first contact your local framer. If you encounter resistance, try another framer.