Want a hard and fast answer?  Not so fast.  The more you explore the question, the less clear is the answer.
 

The question of which is better, glass or acrylic, is not an easy question to answer.  Both have their advantages and disadvantages.  Sometimes glass is preferred, sometimes acrylic is preferred.  It depends on the situation.

When most people think of acrylic (often referred to as Plexiglass) the first thing that leaps to mind is strength.  Compared to glass, acrylic is virtually unbreakable, which makes it a must-have any time the framed piece is likely to be moved around a lot, and an absolute necessity whenever the piece is to be shipped.  If any of the major carriers (UPS, FedEx, DHL) break the glass in a framed piece and ruin the artwork, they will likely not reimburse the market value of the framed artwork.  (They may deem this a subjective value and argue that you could assign any value your little heart desires.)  Instead, they will probably offer to reimburse the value of the items used to create the artwork; ie, the paint, the paper and the glass.  To avoid this infuriating slight, use acrylic when shipping artwork.

Yet, having said that, in at least one sense acrylic is more fragile than glass.  Acrylic is easily scratched.  Even just rubbing a crumpled up paper towel across the surface of acrylic can result in light surface abrasions.  For this reason, you must use a soft cloth when cleaning acrylic, either a cotton rag or a specially constituted paper towel like a Scott Wyp-All, which has the texture and feel of cotton.  In addition, you must use plastic cleaner to clean acrylic, never glass cleaner.  All of which makes acrylic more complicated to clean than glass. 

But there is some good news when it comes to cleaning acrylic.  When you first buy it, acrylic doesn’t need to be cleaned.  Acrylic is typically sold with a protective plastic or paper mask over it.  When you peel away the mask, the acrylic is as clean as it’s ever going to be.  This is quite different than what you experience with glass.  Glass purchased at retail establishments like paint and glass stores or home improvement centers is almost universally filthy when you buy it.  Not only does it require cleaning, it requires repeated and rigorous cleaning if you want any hope of using it. 

All that cleaning has other implications as well.  Unbeknownst to most framers, wiping a dry paper towel repeatedly across the surface of glass builds up static charge.  Static charge is the culprit that causes dust and lint to cling to the inside of your glass.  If you’ve ever had the experience of inspecting a glazed and framed piece prior to putting it into a frame, finding it suitably free of dust and lint, and then loading and securing it into the frame only to discover, upon turning it over, that there are dust particles clinging to the inside of the glass, static charge is the problem.  To eliminate it, either avoid wiping the glass to dry - leave it moist and let it dry the rest of the way on its own – or, better yet, invest in an anti-static brush.  Brush the glass once with the anti-static brush to eliminate the static charge before loading the glass into the frame.         

In case you’re thinking that using acrylic will avoid problems with static charge, think again.  When it comes to static charge, acrylic is worse than glass.  In fact, static charge is the single biggest drawback to using acrylic in framing.  Using acrylic untreated will cause you no end of frustration.  So strong is the static charge in acrylic that it will lift the pastel dust right off a pastel and it will lift charcoal dust from a charcoal drawing.  Fortunately, however, the problem is easily solved.  When you are using acrylic, always use an anti-static brush right after you remove the protective mask.  This will take out the static charge without requiring you to clean the acrylic, a process that seems unnecessary given the fact that the acrylic is already clean when you buy it. 

Now that we’ve addressed the single biggest drawback to acrylic, we should address its single biggest benefit.  Compared to glass acrylic is remarkably lightweight.  With larger pieces, say 24”x36” and larger, glass can be dangerously heavy, causing the frame to bow under the weight.  Not only that, but glass can be downright treacherous to carry in those larger sizes, threatening to flex and snap.  With larger sizes acrylic is preferred.

But the troublesome fragility of glass gives it at least one distinct advantage over acrylic.  Glass is relatively easy to cut.  All you typically need to do to reduce glass to size is to score it once or twice with a glass cutter and snap it cleanly along a sharp edge.  With acrylic you are in for an altogether different experience, particularly if the acrylic is close to the 1/8” thickness considered standard for picture framing.  Even after scoring repeatedly with an acrylic cutter, the acrylic may not be ready for a clean snap, and you will not know for sure until you try, and if you guess wrongly and try too soon, the acrylic will snap jagged and be ruined.  The problem is less severe the thinner the acrylic you use, but if you use acrylic that’s a good deal less than 1/8” thick, you run the risk that it looks plasticky, in other words, cheap.   

Many framers who use acrylic prefer to work in standard sizes so they don’t have to struggle with sizing it, but this is something you need to plan for ahead of time.  Long story short, it can require more advanced planning to use acrylic, but for a variety of other reasons it may be worth it.

There are pros and cons to both glass and acrylic.  Depending on the situation one may be preferred over the other.  But a cut and dried endorsement of one over the other in every case would not be wise.  When choosing glass or acrylic, the choice is not always clear.          

M. David Logan


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