Gallery walls…. I love them. Want anything outside of the classic openings allotted for them? It’ll usually break the bank. Want to purchase a gallery look frame with an offset opening? Those will often break the bank too.

Over the years I’ve purchased a-lot of custom mattes for gallery walls either in my home or in homes that I’m decorating in and this post will share the easiest and most thrifty sites I’ve been able to score custom mattes for reasonable prices from. Here’s a photo of my most recent project in the showroom I work in:

For the purpose of this post, I’ll share my most recent project: a 18x24 frame with an 10 x 8 matte opening, for the purposes of price comparison.

Place #1: Old Faithful and User Friendly: Matboard & More : www.matboardandmore.com

Cost for one 18x24 matte with an 8x10 offset opening: $26.72. Discounts for larger quantities: I needed 6, which came to an $111.78 plus tax and free shipping because I hit the $50 free shipping threshold (I note this for a reason you’ll see with my next spot to get matboards from).

What I love about this site:

It’s super easy to use, there’s tons of colors to choose from (I always stick with Very White) and super easy to determine where the matte opening should be, especially if you want it to have more of an art gallery look and not have the opening centered within the matte itself. You can click to offset the opening and choose the spacing between the top or sides if you wish.

Check out the options below:

Customize the size and opening here and what I love about this site is it actually shows you a model of what your opening would be like. Note, you should be making your opening 1/4 to 1/2” smaller than the picture itself, so 10 x 8 is 9.5 x 7.5” opening.

Place #2: Most Economical for larger orders: Redimat.com

For 6 18x24 mattes with a 10 x 8 cutout offset by 12 inches from the bottom. This was the cheapest I’ve found on the internet at $7.49 a piece, especially if you order a large quantity. However, if you don’t spend $50 you get hit with a very hefty shipping charge. When I put 6 mats in my cart they came to $85.93 because of the hefty $30 shipping charge (see how I got around that below). I chose the White Core in Smooth White color.

So I noticed if I upped the quantity in my cart, the price went down, because the shipping charge was brought down significantly. I ended up ordering 7 mattes (8 showed up in the mail) and I paid $75.20 instead:

The one downside to this website is that it doesn’t show you a model of the dimensions like matboardandmore.com does (see below). So to get around this I used matboardandmore.com’s page to figure out the perfect dimensions, then copied them down into Redimat.com.

Place #3 Etsy: Matboard Shop

This third place was recommended to me by my friend Kat. Follow her on instagram @kd_designdetail .

I didn’t order from here, but she had a great experience with this shop and each 18x 24 mat with the 10 x 8 offset opening cost her $16.75 a piece. They offer double mattes, single mattes, all sorts of large scale sizes and custom cut outs as well as different colored mattes.

Things to Consider:

1. Remember to make your opening size 1/4” or 1/2” smaller than the actual photo, so you are able to tape it perfectly on the back.

2. Where to get prints? While Shutterfly and Snapfish are my go to’s for large project ordering, recently I found Rite Aid/ or now Walgreens to be my best bet for quick prints. They print within an hour and there’s always a code online to get prints for 40 -60% off. 6 prints in my most recent project cost me $11 and change. Walmart.com is also a cheaper site to get photos.

3. Where to get frames? This is all up to personal preference and how much money you want to spend. In my DIY Bathroom Wall Art post I talked about the Belmont frames from Michaels. They’re always running sales and the most recent sale Kat texted me about was buy 1 get 1 free! I also included popular frames from there and target below. In addition I love the studio decor brand at Michaels and Ikea has awesome frames. Just beware that many times IKEA’s frames aren’t standard sizes, so make sure the matboard company you purchase from can accommodate an odd size (for example I think the third link only does standard frame sizes).

Frame Shopping made easy: (click on the picture to be brought to the link)

And there you have it! An easy way to get a gallery custom look to your frames! As always, thanks for stopping by, reading, sharing, and supporting me! <3 Barbra

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