Mount or no mount.

Every framed photograph from the house asks one question after the size and the frame: Mount or Full Bleed. It looks like a detail. It changes the picture more than the colour of the frame does.

What a mount is.

A mount is a card border with a window cut into it, set between the photograph and the frame. The house uses a conservation-quality window mount, bevel-cut and hinged to an acid-free backing board. The photograph prints at the size you choose either way. The mount adds a border around it, so a mounted piece is larger on the wall.

What a mount does.

It gives the photograph room. A margin of plain card separates the picture from the wall and the frame, and slows the eye before it reaches the image. Small sizes gain the most: a Collectors or a Keepsake with a mount carries itself like a size larger.

It also settles a busy picture. A crowded beach, a street of café tables, a scene full of detail: each reads more clearly with space around it. A Corner Worth Keeping, with its wicker chairs and lit windows on a Paris corner, is a photograph that wants a mount.

When full bleed is better.

Full bleed takes the photograph to the edge of the frame. It suits the large sizes, where the picture already holds the wall, and graphic photographs built on strong lines and blocks of colour. The Red Way Up, a red cable car against pale peaks, loses nothing without a border and gains a little force.

Most Wanted

The ones people ask about at dinner. The house’s most collected photographs, in order.

See Most Wanted 

It also gives you more photograph for the same width of wall. Between two windows or above a narrow console, full bleed lets the photograph take the space a mount would have used.

A way to decide.

Choose the mount for Collectors, Keepsake and Study, for busy or detailed photographs, and for rooms with panelling or cornicing. Choose full bleed for Gallery and Grand, for bold, simple compositions, and for plain modern walls. At Signature, either works: let the photograph decide.

Whatever you choose, choose it once per wall. A pair or a group should match: one mounted frame beside one full bleed reads as an accident. For the frame itself, see the guide to wooden frames.