Beginner’s Guide: How to Display Photos Without Frames

Walk into almost any long-established portrait studio, and you’ll likely see traditional portraits hung on the wall, deeply matted, and in heavy wood frames. Making photographic enlargements on photo paper, matting them, and putting them into a frame is a time-honored tradition for displaying prints.

While this style of display is great, I’m going to show you how to display photos without frames and without matting them onto boards. The trick for how to display photos without frames involves using printing processes other than printing on paper. Artbeat Studios offers several of these methods and is my go-to place for different printing styles.

Options for How To Display Photos Without Frames

Part of the appeal of thinking of how to display photos without frames is that we have many methods for displaying our images today. These new methods weren't common when printing on paper, matting the photos, and putting the finished matte board into a classic frame was the common way to hang images on a wall.

As we consider the processes used and other ideas of how to display photos without frames, we see that even the thought of hanging the finished product on a wall is not the only display option we have available to us. Displaying some of these other types of prints on a desk or a tabletop holder works great.

Check out the YouTube video above from ArtBeat Studios about making large prints from iPhone photography for some inspiration!

Metal Prints

ArtBeat Studios makes metal prints by printing on ChromaLuxe® brand aluminum sheets through a heat infusion process with specially formulated inks that actually become a part of the metal instead of the ink simply sitting on the surface of the material.

There are five finishes available from ArtBeat Studios, and the pics can be hung on the wall with a standard inset or a flush mount. The prints are stiff enough to be displayed in a holder that sits on top of a flat surface, too.

Metal prints are a very modern look for displaying photos, working with all sorts of photo styles and genres. It’s one of my top thoughts on how to display photos without frames.

Acrylic Prints

In a similar vein as metal prints, acrylic prints are a premier method of how to display photos without frames for a lot of the same reasons.

The image is first printed onto metallic paper, then face-mounted onto a clear UV-resistant acrylic sheet. This paper and the archival inks result in a luminous and iridescent appearance that, when lit from the front, provides the same type of deep color and intense viewing experience that you see in art gallery shows.

Canvas Prints

Canvas prints or canvas wraps are another fine way of how to display photos without frames. A cotton canvas material is printed with eco-solvent inks, and that material is then stretched over a wood frame which can be displayed as-is or put into any of several styles of frames.

Canvas prints are often chosen as the display method for more traditional styles of imaging, such as landscapes, classic portraits, or still-life art. The canvas material adds a slight texture to the final image, which works well with many types of image styles.

Heavy Matte Boards

A photo printed on regular photo paper can also be displayed with no frame by mounting the paper print onto a heavy matte board. This method is the way that many art fairs allow photographers to sell prints and also works well for office cubicles and dorm rooms.

Low Profile Frames

If you do decide to use a frame, low profile frames can help maximize the impact of the image itself without a large frame and huge matte board taking up a lot of attention. For canvas prints, floating frames are another option.

Electronic Displays

^{Photo by jamesbenet via iStock}

A fantastic gift idea and another great method for how to display photos without frames are electronic photo frames and other digital displays for images. There are so many options for this method that you may simply want to do a Google search for something you’ll like.

Final Thoughts How To Display Photos Without Frames

I hope these ideas for how to display photos without frames give you some inspiration for sharing your fine photography images with other people in real life. Whatever style of photography you enjoy, showing others your images is one of the great joys of photography.