Many people take action to protect their valuable assets from smoke damage, water damage and other natural disaster hazards. What they tend to overlook is the potential long term permanent effects of fading due to UV damage inflicted on their College certificates or photos that may be on display. Document preservation is often an area of neglect but can easily be put into action.

The next time you walk through your doctor's office, take notice of the Medical Certificates on the wall. What you will most likely see is a beautiful frame with a fading document inside. With long term exposure to ultraviolet rays, your certificates, photos, and artwork may suffer from fading caused by UV damage or ultraviolet light.

While people are generally conscious of the potential fading damage the sun can impose on their educational certificates, they rarely think about the harmful effects of fluorescent lights. Even if your diplomas are not in direct sunlight, the fluorescent lights, found in most commercial buildings, will cause your treasures to fade over time. It's time to start thinking about document preservation before it's too late. Once the damage is done it cannot be undone.

Here are 4 useful tips:

1) Standard 48" florescent tubes are the most common threat to your photos, documents, and fine art. UV filtering sleeves are readily available on the market today. Simply remove the bulbs from the fixture, slide the filter over the bulb, and reinstall the bulb into the fixture.

2) Find a darker location to display mores sensitive or higher value items. If something is near and dear to your heart, keep it out but place it away from direct sunlight that may shine through your office windows and keep it away from fluorescent lights.

3) Replace your original work with a replica. Today's high resolution digital photos are economical and can produce and exact copy of your original work. Or you can simply have a laser color copy made at your local copy shop. If you just print out a copy on your home printer, the printed copy will fade very quickly.

4) The glass in framed works provides little or no protection from UV damage. Replace the glass with ultraviolet filtering Plexiglas.


These 4 tips are your first step towards document preservation and your first line of defense from UV damage. Take one more step as you mount your college certificates back on the wall to keep them looking good. Add some Museum Putty to anchor the certificate frame to the wall. Not only will the putty keep the frame straight, it will also keep it from falling off the hook during a hurricane or earthquake.