An all but too common scenario with photo frames and the display position on your walls is they change. You shuffle your furniture, add new things, take old ones out, redecorate, reframe and move the position of your frames. When that’s a problem is when you’re only left with a gaping gap that’s going to put your picture frame in front of direct sunlight.
This is not good because the colours will fade if there’s insufficient UV protection on your glazing.
Just because the picture’s inside a frame, doesn’t mean it’s protected. Fact is, no picture frame offers 100% UV protection. Even the highest-grade conservation framing glass will only give you 97% UV protection, and that comes with an all new problem of adding a green tint to your photos. It’s not completely transparent.
If you want a transparent quality professional glazing, that’s museum grade, and it offers the same 97% protection. Both are expensive, heavy and not ideal for family homes because they’re glass. Ever opened your back door/patio door and had someone open the front door at the same time? The crosswind that blows through can be enough to knock things over – like a frame off the wall.
The safer alternative is UV filtering acrylic glazing. They’re cheaper than conservation and museum glass, safer because they don’t shatter, and they have a higher UV protection of 99%. It’s this glazing we ship all our frames with because it’s got far more advantages and lower shipping costs because it’s lightweight.
A third alternative is to use a spray-on acrylic. These work in a similar way to fixatives, however, it’s likely not what you want to do with any expensive artwork or photos of significance as you would need to be sure they won’t smudge the ink pigments, but moreover, it can be challenging to get an even coating.
The main thing these are handy for is sealing watercolours, charcoal and pencil art, giving them a transparent finish. The added advantage is the UV resistance; however, it won’t be as high as the 99% level of protection you get with acrylic glazing.
What to Know about photo fading and yellowing…
Should you be looking for additional UV protection to prevent any further visible ageing of your photos, such as yellowing or just the sharpness of the image quality fading, it’s not always the UV rays from direct sunlight that cause pictures to fade. It can be a number of things including the room humidity, being too close to any heat source, the quality of the paper the photos are printed on or even the quality of your indoor air.
A fluorescent light can still beam out some powerful UV rays, so if you’re using any fluorescent bulbs close to a picture frame, the UV rays can damage them.
The best course of action to prevent UV damage to your photos is not to hang them in direct sunlight. If you need to, take precautions and protect it with UV resistant glazing of some sort, even if it is a spray.
Another thing to consider is seasonally swapping out your photos because naturally if you’re only displaying your photos for a few months each year, the print’s going to last longer.