The bathroom is one of the trickiest rooms in the home to decorate with art, because of the higher moisture levels. Wood frames are not moisture resistant, and paper is a by-product of wood, so both are prone to mould and mildew when exposed to high humidity for a prolonged period.
There are ways to mitigate the risk by trying to make your frames moisture resistant. One of the most common is to use foam board as the backing board, cut precisely to fit snuggly in the back of the frame and then sealed with an airtight sealant around the edges to prevent moisture ingress. The thing is, most backing boards are either cardboard or MDF so unless the backing board is metal, moisture will still accumulate in the foam board, so it is not going to moisture-proof a frame.
When the walls in your bathroom need some personalising or just something to brighten the room up, consider a few alternatives to paper prints.
3 Unusual Framing Ideas Perfect for Moisture-Laden Rooms
1. Ceramics, Tiles and Plates
Ceramics can be used to tile the entirety of a bathroom, and since you can get them in a variety of designs, it’s possible to create your own framed art out of either one gorgeous artistic print ceramic, or you could tailor your own curated collection to design a bespoke wall piece to match the decor of your bathroom.
The other choice that is not always obvious is the personalisation of ceramic prints.
Footprints, pawprints, and handprints have long been favourites in families for displaying keepsakes on their walls. The same imprints can be made directly onto ceramic tiles, and glass plates. Plates have the advantage of having larger space, which can be used for more personalisation, such as adding a name and birth date to a plate.
In terms of framing these, the thickness of tiles and plates fit within most standard size frames. The only amendment you would need is the mount, and those can be any colour of your choosing. When displayed in a bathroom, the mount board will likely need replacing on occasion.
Tip: When you know you are going to need more than the one mount board, buy more of the same colour to qualify for bulk purchase discounts.
2. Cloth Materials
A huge upside of most items made from textiles is you can iron it out flat and use adhesive to stick it down to a flat surface then put it inside a frame.
Retro tea towels used to be a thing, and there are still some collectors of these vintage items. Most of the British retro tea towels are of places that used to be Britain’s seaside tourist hotspots, including Blackpool, Skegness and Great Yarmouth.
If you would rather have prints with a personal touch, you can find a range of places offering personalised tea towel prints. These can be hung with or without a frame.
Depending on the depth of the frame, it may be able to accommodate smaller items such as a pair of leather gloves, a collection of buttons, or even seashells as you can stick these to the picture mount then use adhesive to apply that to a foam backing board.
For items that are slightly too thick to fit inside the glass, you could display it unglazed.
3. Patchwork Art
Most quilters will be familiar with patchwork as it is the method to make similar artistic pieces made from the textiles that would otherwise be scrapped. At least, that’s how patchwork started. Today, it is a craft project with people using a variety of fabric patterns to piece together something unique. The beauty of patchwork art is there are rarely two pieces ever the same, as each one is always handmade, albeit, machine-stitched for the most part, although some may be hand-stitched depending on the person’s preference.
For something truly standout to display in your bathroom, it would be possible to have a personalised tea towel printed and instead of framing directly with a picture mount, use patchwork as the backdrop to surround your custom textile print.
In Summary
Between ceramics, stone, glass, and textiles, there will be plenty of things you can use to create a bespoke piece of wall art to display in bathrooms and in kitchens where the moisture is more likely to damage paper-based prints. Despite having higher moisture levels in bathrooms, there are still materials suited to this moisture-laden environment, and they can look much more unique than any traditional print.