Mat Color

Armentor

Grumbler in Training
Joined
Jul 27, 2016
Posts
10
Location
New Orleans, LA, US
All, I have a photograph that is almost all white with cooler colors in the center. It is to be framed at 32x40 using the the Nielsen 117 white metal frame with a white mat. I'm having a hard time finding a bright enough white mat that does not look warm once put against the image and frame.

I have the Artique sampler and the brightest one they have is Digital White, which is not cool enough.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

thank you
Dave
 
In my experience, Digital White is the whitest.
 
I always shuddered when someone wanted "white on white on white" because in my humble opinion it never looks good. The white frame will never match the white matt behind the glass and even the bevel looks different from the surface paper of the card.

Far better to separate the artwork from the matt with a thin sliver of a contrasting colour or use something like Crescent's Silver Gray for the matt. As my Father used to say "A good contrast beats the h3ll out of a bad match."
 
Bainbridge 8260 is a close equivalent, but if Artcare isn't necessary, go with the Artique. There's also a Peterboro equivalent, but I just can't remember the number. Alan Yaffe of Peterboro will be along shortly, I'll bet. He'll mention the issue of whiteners.
 
I recently needed a really "white-white" mat and I used a Peterboro W1000 Digital white and it was perfect.
It may be even whiter and brighter than the Artique digital white.
 
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Not "whiteners". I meant "optical brighteners".
 
From what I've heard, whites using optical brighteners can yellow some once they lose their oomph.
 
Last year I had a client wanting to match a bright white, and the best I could come up with was a crescent mat. Afterwards, I went on a hunt for the brightest white mat I could find. I consulted specifiers, talked to industry people, and ordered samples from several mat board producers, even ones I didn't carry in my shop.

Personally, I don't favor bright whites or darkest blacks in matting art, it's too severe in contrast, as I frame mostly antique or vintage works. I prefer charcoals, light greys, and subtle aged light colors such as Rising's discontinued Zinc (a hard to replicate color ).
What I found was a Peterboro conservation mat that out shined all the rest. Sorry can't recall the SKU.

A few weeks later the Crescent rep stopped in with some new mat sample additions, and boasted about how they had the brightest, hard edged white on the market. I compared the Peterboro vs Crescent, and there was no doubt that Peterboro had the win.

As for OPB optical brighteners, I'm sure they will degrade over time like every other component in a frame package.​
 
Digital white Artique, a4977, or the Peterboro Whitecore W1000, if I remember correctly. Bainbridge has one that's really close, but I forget the number.

Am I close to your findings?
 
White.....ya can't live with it, ya can't live without it :cool:


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Sparkling, brilliant, diamond, warm, cool, digital, snow, pure, igloo, traditional, photo, polar, very, super, sail, pure, dove..........
all whites. And never enough whites, always wishing, mining for the perfect whiter white.
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Speaking of white mats, wouldn't it be a wonderful world if mat companies would replace white and light colored samples separately from entire durned sets of samples? Nobody ever soils the greens and the blues and the greys - but the whites always look like the wrath of God. I can only erase them so many times . . .
 
Speaking of white mats, wouldn't it be a wonderful world if mat companies would replace white and light colored samples separately from entire durned sets of samples? Nobody ever soils the greens and the blues and the greys - but the whites always look like the wrath of God. I can only erase them so many times . . .
I have a sample chevron cut file saved on my CMC software, we regularly replace our samples by placing this in the fall out of another mat, this way our samples are always pristine.
 
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