What is a fillet?

April 8, 2025 | The Frame Shop |

Not to be confused with a cut of meat or fish.

A fillet is a small moulding that may be used as an edging under a mat or frame lip. Customers often pull these pieces off of our wall when they want a minimal frame, but fillets aren’t strong enough to hold glass or acrylic. They are meant to be an accent piece only. Below we’ve used a silver fillet in between the mat and image of the horse and a yellow fillet to add a little more color between the image and mat on the right.

Above, we used a gold fillet around each opening to accentuate the individual pieces and tie them to the gold frame.
In the black birds piece above and the Notre Dame piece below, we used a liner (fabric wrapped moulding) to separate the frame from the gold fillet, giving them a bit of depth.

For the print on the right, we used a simple gold fillet to accent this colored frame and tie in the pussy willows and cat.

Using a fillet can be a great way to add an accent color to your frame. It’s minimal, but very effective.

We’d be happy to show you our fillet options!