Matte card colour?

So you have this lovely picture and you use it as a desktop, put it in one of those nice Photobooks that Apple do. Everyone says wow nice it is, so you want to frame it.
I bought one of those fancy cutters, which works pretty well, even for me. I mounted quite a few on black card and they look nice (some of them in particular) with the 45degree bevels and all.
But I can't help feeling that I could do better with some alternative colours. Is there a rule of thumb about what colour to choose? It's clearly a matter of taste in the end but a bit of guidance can often save an expensive learning process. I naturally don't want to buy an A1 piece of card for each picture.

Good question, but if we're talking about mounting board colours I think we should ask two questions. Do we want to be attracted to the image or the mount? Is there a particular colour that would enhance this particular image?

If the image is paramount, then black for me. We don't look through our viewfinders and see the world with a white, beige or purple surround. It would distract us. In the same way, a black mount is generally unobtrusive and concentrates our eyes on the picture.

However, sometimes a different colour can enhance an image. A high key portrait, almost all whites, could look best on a white mount.

Likewise, rarely, a different colour might be appropriate, but it is rare indeed that this works. A red mount would need very unusual circumstances to work, but even such an extreme is not impossible.

Jessops still sell mounting board in a variety of clours and sizes in packs of 10. See their website.

Hope that helps!

I've always liked ivory, particularly for mono. Museums seem to go for a neutral mid gray.

Good answers. Thanx.
So I'll stick to black, mostly, which is my fave! and not feel bad about it.

One thing I was told at a photogtraphy club was that Black mounts make a photo stand out more however in a competition it is current practice to use white or cream so as to allow the image to speak for itself as it were.

There is an element of fashion in this.

White or cream were the norm many years ago, then we went to black, now white and cream are having a bit of a comeback.

You pays your money....

I think it makes sense to have some contrast between the image and the surroundings (ie. light image with dark mount and vice versa), although most of the photo mounts I saw at the National Portrait Gallery recently were white or cream. They all looked great, although the gallery lighting had a lot to do with it as well.

Most (if not all) pictures in National Portrait Gallery will have been mounted with museum quality rag mountboard which is only made in cream or white and is made from cotton rag as opposed to wood pulp as normal paers and card is.

Phil