Art storage at home: how to keep unframed works in good condition

Store unframed work flat or upright in acid-free materials, somewhere cool, dry and dark, and you will keep it in good condition for decades. The enemies of art at home are damp, heat, light and acidic packaging, and almost every storage decision comes down to keeping those four things away from the surface of the work.

Most of us accumulate more art than we can hang. Prints bought at a fair, a drawing from a degree show, the painting waiting for the right wall: these tend to end up leaning behind a wardrobe or sliding around in a drawer, which is exactly how they get damaged. A little care at the point of storage is far cheaper than conservation later.

Where in the house should you store art?

Choose an interior space on a living floor, never the loft or garage. The reason is simple: art is happiest in the same stable, moderate conditions that suit people. A loft bakes in summer and chills in winter, a garage holds damp, and both go through daily swings of temperature and humidity that make paper expand and contract until it cockles or splits. A cupboard in a bedroom or hallway, away from radiators and external walls, gives you the steady, unremarkable climate that work actually needs.

Avoid anywhere prone to moisture. Bathrooms and kitchens are obvious culprits, but so is the bottom of a wardrobe against an outside wall, where condensation can form unseen. If a room ever smells musty, it is too damp for art.

How do you store unframed prints, drawings and works on paper?

Lay works on paper flat, interleaved with acid-free tissue, inside an acid-free folder or archival box. Flat storage supports the whole sheet evenly, so nothing curls, creases or bends under its own weight. The interleaving tissue stops the surface of one work from rubbing against the back of another, which matters enormously for anything in charcoal, pastel, chalk or soft pencil, where the marks lift at the lightest touch.

The phrase to look for when you buy materials is acid-free, or archival. Ordinary cardboard, brown paper and the backing board in cheap frames are acidic, and over years they leach into the work and leave the brown staining you have probably seen on old prints and book pages. Acid-free tissue, boards and boxes prevent it. This is the kind of conservation-grade material a good framer keeps in stock, and somewhere like Artisan Framing Ltd can supply or advise on the right boards if you would rather not source them online.

Flat, dark, dry and acid-free: get those four right and almost nothing else can go wrong.

If you have a large flat-file or plan chest, that is the ideal home for paper. Most people do not, and a sturdy archival portfolio box laid flat on a shelf does the job perfectly well. Resist the urge to roll anything other than work that was designed to be rolled, such as some posters; rolling sets a permanent curl into most papers and cracks any thicker media.

How should canvases and panels be stored?

Stand stretched canvases upright, face to face, with a soft barrier between them. A painting on canvas should never be laid flat, because the fabric will slowly sag away from the wall it makes between the stretcher bars, and anything resting on the front can dent the surface for good. Upright storage keeps the tension even and the paint film undisturbed.

Place the works face to face and back to back so that no stretcher edge presses into a painted surface, and slip a sheet of acid-free board or clean foam between each pair. Keep them slightly raised off the floor, on a batten or a shelf, so that a spilled drink or a damp floor cannot wick up into the canvas. Panels and boards are more forgiving and can be stored upright in the same way, padded at the edges.

What about light, pests and handling?

Keep stored art in the dark, handle it as little as possible, and check on it from time to time. Light fades pigment and yellows paper even when work is not on display, so a closed cupboard is doing real protective work. Insects and silverfish are drawn to the size and starch in paper, so avoid leaving boxes undisturbed for years in a damp corner, and never store food or houseplants alongside art.

When you do move a piece, hold it by the edges with clean, dry hands, and support a large sheet from underneath rather than letting it flop. If you are deciding what is worth storing carefully and what could go on the wall instead, our guide to displaying works on paper at home without damaging them covers the display side of the same question.

Good storage is mostly about boredom: a steady cupboard, the right materials, and leaving the work alone. Do that, and the print you could not afford to frame this year will be in perfect condition when you finally can. For a sense of how seriously the field takes works on paper, it is worth seeing how a specialist space such as Bankside Gallery presents watercolours and prints, which are exactly the kinds of fragile, light-sensitive works that reward careful keeping.