It’s a rite of passage. As young adults grow up, they ditch their futons, get nicer towels and decide it’s time to upgrade their wall art. Then they walk into their local frame shop, get a multi-hundred dollar estimate and often walk straight back out.
Custom framing has never been cheap, but it’s also never been quite as costly as it is now. The price has doubled over the past decade, estimates Harry Biscarr, owner of Allen Custom Frame in D.C.’s Friendship Heights.
It’s a rite of passage. As young adults grow up, they ditch their futons, get nicer towels and decide it’s time to upgrade their wall art. Then they walk into their local frame shop, get a multi-hundred dollar estimate and often walk straight back out.
Custom framing has never been cheap, but it’s also never been quite as costly as it is now. The price has doubled over the past decade, estimates Harry Biscarr, owner of Allen Custom Frame in D.C.’s Friendship Heights.
“Prices have just gone up, and honestly, I tell my customers, I’m like, oh my God, I know, and I’m so sorry,” said Biscarr. “It’s never been more expensive. … And there’s nothing I can do about that. Like, I’m surprised I’m still in business sometimes.”
For years, the custom-framing industry has been under stress from all sides: increasing costs, new competition, an aging skilled workforce and now tariffs. Add to all of this the need to constantly make the case for why the service is worth doing.
Despite the increased price tag, though, there’s still a hunger to frame art and mementos — indeed, customers now consider a broader swath of items worthy of a frame job. Retailers are adapting, both aesthetically (to match younger shoppers’ maximalist tastes) and in the services they offer, to try to keep their doors open.
There is no question that a custom-frame job is expensive, especially compared to the prices of ready-made frames. The price difference reflects two very different processes and products.
Custom framer William Hauck has heard people say, “‘Oh, it’s like framing, it was like it’s just wood and glass, right? You just stick it together,’” Hauck said. “But it’s not.” Hauk is the general manager of Frame of Mine, a family-owned custom frame shop in Washington D.C.’s Capitol Hill neighborhood that has a range of specialized machinery to cut mats and glass, plus heat presses. “Everything is custom, bespoke.”
When would-be customers measure the cost of a custom job against a premade frame sitting on the shelf of a big box store, Hauck reminds them that the latter is “mass produced. It might not even be real wood, it might be some foam frame,” he says. The final product will look different and it won’t protect art like a custom job would. Still, he acknowledges that custom framing is a luxury, and it isn’t in everyone’s budget.
“I tell people, if you’re not ready to spend the money on this, go there and get the pre-made frame, put your art or photo in it, let it sit there,” he said. “And when you’re ready to actually do it up nicely, then come see us.”
But it’s not just about measuring the price of a custom frame job versus a ready-made one. It’s also about contrasting the amount of money you’d be spending framing a piece now versus a decade ago.
The main culprit of rising costs: Materials are far more expensive than they used to be.
Plexiglass doubled in price during the pandemic, and the costs never came down. Once-bargain materials are now pricey, too. “Metal frames are no longer cheaper at all, not even close,” Biscarr said. “Actually, they’re more expensive than a lot of cheaper wood frames.” And across the board, he said, communications from suppliers now begin with “Due to the tariffs…”
And these mom-and-pop stores also face other forms of increases familiar to most businesses and families, like higher utility bills. Bigger companies have an easier time managing their margins, because they’re working on a larger scale.
Framebridge entered the scene 11 years ago with a somewhat different model: They limit the framing options from thousands of choices to about 100 (they only offer one form of UV-protected acrylic, and no glass), and do all of the work at a centralized location.
“What that means is we can invest in our materials and we can utilize our materials really well,” said Susan Tynan, founder of Framebridge. “We don’t throw away the scraps — we’re using our materials because of the volume of framing we do.” (While Tynan said the company is impacted by tariffs, “we’re not impacted in a way that we can’t work through. … It’s not as dramatic as it is in other areas of furniture retail.”) They began online-only, and the company started opening brick-and-mortar stores six years ago.
The way that Framebridge lays out its pricing has influenced some of the mom-and-pop stores, such as Frame of Mine’s “Bipartisan Framing Program Pricing,” per Hauck. “It’s kind of the same idea that Framebridge has, based on size. We have a select number of frames, select number of mats.”
Despite the existence of upstarts, Michaels remains far and away the biggest player in the multibillion dollar framing industry. The crafting retailer has 1,375 stores in North America, each with a custom framing section.
The company keeps prices down by controlling all the stages of its framing supply chain, said Nicholas Bertram, president and chief operating officer of Michaels. “We actually have a company called Artistree that is actually milling and actually making these, and that’s why our cost is so strong.”
While people often talk about consumer-oriented framing for homes, framing items for businesses is worth “a couple billion dollars as well,” he added. “Look at what happens inside of hotels or on cruise ships.”
Some mom-and-pop framers are trying to get into the vertical integration game, too. Frame of Mine stocks some frames from other small shops that have branched out into fabrication and created their own frames to sell.
“Framers are doing different things now to supplement their incomes,” said Hauck. A few years back, Frame of Mine acquired a huge printer so the store can print and then frame digital photos. The store also sells ready-made frames created from excess moldings.
Something seems to be working. Despite the high prices, retailers say they have been attracting a younger clientele. “Maybe 10 years ago, it was a much older crowd,” said Hauck. Now he sees a lot of young couples: “The whole thing is like, I’m an adult now, I am married. We have a place, we’re going to put some nice stuff up on the wall.”
Still, Hauck is worried about the future of independent frame shops. Like many framers, he came into the field through the art world: “Everyone who works here is an artist in some right,” he said. At 48, Hauck is considered “a young person in the business, but most people are hitting their 50s, 60s, 70s, and there’s no one to leave the business to, so a lot of them are just closing up shops.”
Biscarr, of Allen Custom Framing, says the whole business comes down to relationships: “Real collectors want a relationship with their picture framer, and that’s what I offer,” he says. He’s happy to spend hours with customers going over potential options for mats, frames and more, but with his longtime clients, that isn’t always necessary.
“I have some customers who literally will walk in, drop something and say, send me the invoice,” he says. Part of the trust, he notes, is that people know that whatever they drop off stays in his care at his store.
There’s also a level of intimacy due to the personalized nature of many of the items.
Since Bertram started at Michaels eight months ago, he learned that custom framing is “the most emotional department inside of our store,” he said. “There is so much emotion attached to something that you choose to frame.”
Framebridge sees a lot of what Tynan likes to call artifacts — menus, marathon bibs, matchbooks, tickets, old recipe cards. “A lot of what we frame is commemorative or celebratory,” she said. “Framing is like an expression of what you value.” Those items are also far less pricey than, say, high-end art.
Overall, the framers have observed more of a maximalist approach to framing.
“The trends are now color, way more color now,” Biscarr said. “I have samples that are like fancy, kind of ornate frames, but like literally pink and sparkly.”
Hauck has found more people framing oversize art in the past five years. “People have been coming in with these large, large pieces, which has become more a thing,” he says. “We remarked a couple years ago like, I have never seen this many big pieces come in.”
Beyond the increasing price tag and changing tastes is the question of value, which is deeply personal, highly variable and often inconsistent. Do people ever come in and spend more money on framing the item than the cost of item itself? All the time.
But that’s a choice, and not necessarily a foolish one. “If you want something to stand out, you have to invest in it,” Biscarr said. “The difference is your couch is not going to last 30 years. Your frame is going to last you 30 years.”
Custom framers will always have to grapple with skewed expectations about what a custom service costs. Hauck says customers experience sticker shock over a $500 estimate, but have no problem dropping that same amount of money on a fancy restaurant down the street for dinner.
“That meal goes away in one day,” said Hauck. “You might have the memory, but you can’t frame it.” Meanwhile, that framed piece “is going to be up on your wall for however long you live.”
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