Frames That Match

Written in the frame above on Duane Hampton's table reads: I don't believe less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat-fat, thin-thin and enough is enough!

One of the first things I tell clients when they ask me to re-do their book cases or when we are decorating, is that they need to take all their existing family photos and do two things with them.

1. Group them together in one place.  Personally, I think that family photographs should be only in the family room and the bedroom. But that's just my own personal opinion. What I do think is absolutely necessary though is to take the pictures that are scattered all throughout the shelves or various rooms and put them all together in one place. If you have a study or library with lots of shelves, dedicate only two of the shelves to your pictures - don't put pictures on every shelf.  If you have one or two photographs on every table in your house, put them all on one table, or your piano if you have one. If they are all together, it looks more cohesive to the eye AND people will stay and linger longer looking at them. When they are scattered throughout, you stop looking after you've seen one or two pictures and it just becomes "stuff".

On both sides of Duane Hampton's bedside are groups of family photo's.  I think having a few of your favorite pictures of your beloveds here is a great idea: it is the last thing you see before you turn out the light to go to bed and it is the first thing you see in the morning when you look at your clock. What a great way to end and begin the day. (all three images above and one below from NYSD)

2. Put the pictures in similar looking frames.  I think this is rather important. For one client, I took all her snapshots that were in every room, and took them out of the various frames. When you have one rhinestone frame next to a Pier One indian frame next to a Strongwater frame next to a Nambé frame... all you notice are the busy cacophony of fighting styles; you don't notice the pictures inside anymore. When you take them out and put them in frames that look alike or similar coloured frames, all of a sudden you notice the faces inside the frames! The frames become secondary, which is how they are intended to be used in the first place. After I removed her photographs from the various frames, I took several of her pictures and did two things with them: I enlarged some and I made some black and white. Often people have only one size photographs everywhere: the standard 4x6. I think it's more interesting and works better when there are various sizes of frames and pictures: Enlarge a few to 8x10's, 5x7's, 3x5's, some 5x5's and even some circular and oval shapes. Now you've got an interesting mix of sizes so you can see every picture, even when you stack them three rows deep. Sometimes I put all my black & whites together on one table, and sometimes I mix in the coloured pictures with them.

(click to enlarge)

This is the grouping of photographs I did for the client mentioned above. If you place the 8x10's (horizontally and vertically) in the back and place the smaller pictures in front you can easily see each picture. All of the above frames are from Pottery Barn. I happen to be partial to simple silver-toned frames, and have found that to be my go-to source for affordable, no tarnish frames. Try mixing it up with some matte's inside the frames too. I used one burlap matte in a shadow-boxed frame above for some interest, and used a circular frame too.

This is a bedside table in which I used two different frames, but both with shells to tie them together.

On the other side of the bed, I kept the shell theme by using another frame identical to the shell frame on the opposite side of the bed, but added two enameled frames in different colours with rhinestones on them. It works because the colours are all "related" by the coral/shell theme and two out of the three match in the material used.

Just when I lay out all my rules on Framing Family Snapshots, I go and break my own rules. I don't need to show you pictures of photographs hung on the wall in matching frames, we all know it works beautifully and is a great look. 

But I broke my own rules here when I hung family photos in a hallway, in totally unrelated frames, unrelated sizes, unrelated images and unrelated styles.  But for some reason it works! I think the trick is, when hanging images on a wall regardless of the frames that they are in, is to make sure you hang them closer together rather than further apart. I hung these so close that in some instances there is only an ¼" of space in between them. That alone is what I think made this work. They are so close together that you don't really see them as individual images - they read as one whole image on each wall.  So I guess the moral to the story, for me to learn first, is that all rules are made to be broken! Just go with looks best I guess!