Journal · care

Keeping framed art alive in Florida.

The Frame Shop, Fort Lauderdale · updated July 2026

Florida is a glorious place to live and a genuinely hostile one for art. We see what a decade here does to pieces every week at the bench — most of it preventable, none of it complicated. Three enemies: light, humidity, and storm season. Here's what actually works against each.

Where it hangs matters as much as how it's framed.

Light: the quiet one

UV does most of the damage — inks and dyes fade, paper yellows, signatures dull — and it works slowly enough that you don't notice until you move the frame and see the wall-shadow ghost of what the colors used to be. Conservation and museum glazing block about 99% of UV, which puts fading on a human timescale instead of a Florida one. Two caveats: standard glass blocks very little, and no glazing fully protects a piece hanging in direct, all-day sun. Placement is part of conservation — across from a bright window is fine, inside the sunbeam is not. The full comparison is in our glass guide.

Humidity: the one that moves

Paper is a plant. It drinks South Florida air, swells, and shrinks back every time the AC cycles — that's where ripples, cockling, and mat waviness come from. Good framing is the defense: acid-free mats and backing, the art hinged so it can move, the back sealed against air and insects. Your side of the bargain:

• Keep the AC steady — big humidity swings, not humidity itself, do the damage. Leaving a house closed and un-cooled for the summer is the classic one.
• Steamy rooms are for posters. Keep anything you care about out of bathrooms and away from kitchen steam.
• Give the wall a thought — a wall that stays cool and dry beats one that sweats when the weather turns.

And the one that surprises people: a brown line creeping in around the opening of an older frame is mat burn — an acidic mat slowly writing itself onto the art. It's also the easiest thing on this page to fix: new acid-free mat, same frame, done.

Cleaning without casualties

• Never spray the glass. Spray the cloth, then wipe — liquid sprayed at the frame wicks under the glass edge and blooms into the mat.
• Acrylic is not glass. Ammonia cleaners fog it permanently. A dry microfiber cloth or a plastic-safe cleaner, nothing else.
• Canvas gets no glass — it's sealed and wipeable. A soft, dry brush or cloth for dust; no products.
• Wood and gilded frames want a dry dusting. Furniture polish builds a film the finish never asked for.

Worth bringing in when you see it

Foxing (rust-colored freckles on the paper), ripples that don't settle when the weather does, a brown mat-burn line, or fading you can see against the piece's own edges. None of these fix themselves, all of them are cheaper to address early — send a photo and a framer will tell you whether it needs anything at all.

Storm season, plainly

Before a storm: move pieces off the floor and away from windows, interior room if you can. A frame protects art from air and light, not water — and after any water event, open the back sooner rather than later; a damp piece sealed in a frame grows things you don't want. We repack and reframe storm-season casualties every year; faster is always better.

Ways in

Frame a photo with conservation glazing · The glass guide · Care questions in the FAQ · older piece showing its age? Ask a framer — it's free.