How to Frame and Display Your Dog Portrait — Room Ideas and Framing Tips

Your portrait arrives rolled in an archival tube, protected for the journey. At that point, you are holding a finished piece of art — the image complete, the colours accurate, the paper substantial in your hand. What happens next determines whether it becomes a centrepiece that transforms a wall, or something that leans against a skirting board for three months before you get around to sorting it.

Framing is not complicated. But it does reward a small amount of thought, and the right frame will lift a portrait from something good into something genuinely gallery-worthy.

Here is everything you need to know.

Why Portraits Arrive Unframed

The decision to ship portraits unframed is deliberate, and it is worth explaining because the reasoning is directly relevant to how you should approach choosing a frame.

Framing is personal in a way that portrait style is not. Two people can both love The Admiral theme — the navy coat, the brass buttons, the commanding maritime bearing — and still live in rooms that call for completely different frames. One lives in a period property with dark-stained woodwork and warm, traditional finishes; the other has a Scandinavian-styled apartment with white walls and pale oak floors. The frame that looks exactly right in one room will look completely wrong in the other.

If portraits arrived pre-framed, the frame would be chosen without any knowledge of the room it was going into. That is a coin flip with an expensive outcome, and there is no good reason to take that risk. A portrait chosen by someone who knows your dog, framed by someone who knows your room, will always look better than one where both decisions were made by the same stranger.

The second reason is practical: framed prints do not ship well. A frame adds rigidity, fragility, and volume in ways that make international shipping both expensive and unreliable. A print rolled in an archival tube arrives in perfect condition. A framed print has a significant chance of arriving with a cracked corner, a damaged frame, or a print that has shifted against the glass.

Your portrait is better off framed locally, by you or by a framer who can see it in person.

Matching the Frame to the Portrait Theme

The visual language of each portrait theme has clear implications for framing. Here are specific recommendations for the two Pupello themes.

The Admiral

The Admiral is a portrait of naval authority — deep navy tones, warm brass-yellow buttons and epaulettes, rich backgrounds with the depth and warmth of old Flemish portraiture. It sits naturally in a period context. The colours call for frames that echo the formality and warmth of the palette.

A dark mahogany or dark walnut frame with a cream or warm white mat is the classic choice. The dark frame provides a strong visual boundary that the portrait’s rich colours can push against. The cream mat creates a breathing space between the image and the frame that is standard fine art practice and significantly elevates the presentation. If the room’s existing woodwork runs warm and dark — bookshelves, dado rails, door frames — a mahogany-toned frame will anchor the portrait to the space.

A black frame with a cream or ivory mat is the more contemporary alternative. Black is versatile enough to work in both traditional and modern rooms, and the contrast it creates with The Admiral’s warm tones is dramatic without being jarring.

Avoid silver or brushed-metal frames with The Admiral. The cool metallic tones fight rather than complement the palette, and the result feels mismatched in a way that is hard to explain but immediately visible.

The Centurion

The Centurion’s palette of cool whites, greys, and marble tones calls for frames that share its restraint. This is not a portrait that needs a dark, substantial frame — it needs a frame that steps back and lets the classical composition do the work.

A white or off-white frame, ideally with a simple profile rather than an ornate one, is the primary recommendation. The frame becomes an extension of the portrait’s cool palette, creating a clean, gallery-style presentation that feels contemporary and deliberate. A light grey or bleached wood frame achieves a similar effect and works particularly well on walls with warm-toned paint or plaster.

The mat, if you use one, should be minimal — a narrow white or very pale grey border that provides separation without competing with the image. A thick, heavily textured mat would add visual weight in a direction the portrait is not trying to go.

The Centurion also looks strong without a mat, in a clean contemporary frame with the print fitted close to the rebate. In that configuration it reads more as a print and less as a traditional framed work, which suits some rooms very well.

Frame Size by Portrait Size

Standard portrait sizes correspond to standard frame sizes available in most countries, though the fit varies. Here is a practical guide.

A4 (21 × 29.7 cm) — A standard 30 × 40 cm frame accommodates an A4 print with a mat, which is the recommended approach. The mat adds a border that fills the frame and gives the portrait room to breathe visually. Without a mat, a frame sized exactly to A4 will work but will look tighter than ideal.

A3 (29.7 × 42 cm) — A 40 × 50 cm frame is the standard fit. Again, a mat sized to accommodate the print within this frame produces the best result. A3 is a genuinely substantial size on the wall — large enough to be a focal point in most rooms without requiring gallery-scale space.

Medium (40 × 50 cm) — At this size, standard frames become harder to find consistently across different countries and suppliers. A local framer is strongly recommended. The target frame size is approximately 50 × 60 cm with a mat, or a custom-cut frame if the framer can produce one to exact specification. This is a portrait that will command a wall, and the investment in a well-made custom frame is proportionate to the result.

Large (50 × 70 cm) — This size calls for a gallery-style frame at approximately 60 × 80 cm, and custom framing is effectively the only option that will produce the right result. A large portrait framed to a high standard becomes a major statement piece — the kind of thing that defines the room. Take your time with this decision. Bring the print to a framer, put it against a wall, and make the frame choice in front of the portrait rather than from a catalogue.

Where to Display

Where you hang a portrait matters as much as how you frame it.

The solo statement piece is the most impactful approach for any single large portrait. One wall — ideally a wall you face when entering a room, or the wall you look at from wherever you spend most of your time in that space — with a single framed portrait hung at eye level. Nothing else on that wall. This is how galleries have displayed works for centuries, and it works because it gives the eye nowhere else to go. White walls amplify the effect significantly: a single large portrait on a plain white wall is among the most dramatic things you can do in a room without renovation.

The practical rule for hanging height: centre the portrait at approximately 145–150 cm from the floor to the middle of the image. This corresponds to average eye level and is the standard used by most galleries. It is higher than most people intuitively hang things — pictures tend to drift down over the years — but the visual difference between a portrait hung at true eye level and one hung a few centimetres below it is immediately apparent.

The gallery wall is the right context for smaller portraits, or for situations where you want to integrate the portrait into a broader display of family photographs, prints, and objects. A gallery wall works when the grouping has a sense of coherence — a consistent frame style or palette, a clear overall shape, enough variety within that coherence to be interesting. A dog portrait sits naturally in a gallery wall that includes family photographs: it signals, without needing to say anything, that this animal is part of the family and is treated accordingly.

If you are building a gallery wall around a dog portrait, let the portrait be the compositional anchor. Position it first, roughly centred in the arrangement, and build the other pieces around it. Give it slightly more breathing room than the other elements in the grouping — the space makes it read as the centrepiece rather than one item among many.

A Note for Digital File Orders

If you ordered a digital file rather than a physical print, the same principles apply — you are simply starting from a different point. The digital file is the same full-resolution artwork used to produce the physical prints, and it can be taken to any print provider in your area.

When you print locally, specify the paper stock clearly: a satin or semi-gloss fine art paper at 250gsm or close to it will produce results that approximate what you would receive from a Pupello physical print. Ask your print provider what they have available and, if possible, request a small test print on their preferred fine art stock before committing to the full size.

For buyers who want to produce multiple copies — one for themselves, one for a family member — the digital file is the obvious solution. One file, multiple prints at whatever size and format suits each recipient’s room.

The Short Version

If you take nothing else from this: choose a frame that complements rather than competes with the portrait, hang it at eye level on as clear a wall as you can give it, and give it space. A single large portrait on a white wall, framed well and hung correctly, is one of the most dramatic pieces of decor available for the price.

The portrait does the work. The frame and the wall position either help it or hinder it. Help it.

To see the available portrait sizes and confirm the dimensions before you start frame shopping, visit Pupello’s pricing page. When you are ready to commission a portrait, the portrait creator at /create takes you through the whole process from photo upload to final proof.