Tips to Display Your Collectibles
If you’ve built up a collection of items, there’s surely a reason for it. Perhaps you’re interested in the history or aesthetic value of the objects, or maybe you have some kind of emotional attachment to them.
Whatever the case may be, the bottom line is that, if these items are important to you, you’ll likely want to display them. To make your collectibles look better than ever, follow these four essential display tips.
#1: Use Lighting to Add Emphasis
If you want to bring attention to a particular item or collection of items, then adding some basic lighting may do the trick. The right lighting can completely transform how a collectible looks while it’s on display. This is especially true for glass and metallic collectibles that have the potential to shine. Good lighting can enhance the appeal of items like jewelry, trophies, and vases, to name a few examples.
How you light your collectibles depends on how you display them. If they’re displayed on a stand or in a display cabinet, then it should be easy enough to add some lighting. First, use a flashlight to play around with different angles and find the spot where the lighting best complements the object. Try shining a light from above, behind, to the sides, and underneath, and see what achieves the most favorable effect.
Once you’ve determined the angle you like for a given object or collection of objects, then all you’ll need to do is install the lights. Luckily, there are plenty of display lights available for purchase out there that are easy to install on virtually any display stand or cabinet.
#2: Keep Valuable Items Protected
If you have valuable collectibles, it’s important to keep them safe and protected from potential damage. While certain valuables can have significant monetary value, these are not necessarily the only ones you’ll want to protect — you might want to keep items with sentimental value out of harm’s way as well.
So how do you best protect the collectibles you care most about? For flat or near-flat objects, such as paintings, signed posters, and rare photographs, you’ll want to place them in a high-quality frame. This will help to preserve them, protecting them from wear and tear, and shielding them from dust.
Tips to Display Your Collectibles
As far as your bulkier collectibles go, you might consider placing them inside a glass curio cabinet. Similar to a frame, this will help protect your most valuable items from dust buildup and other kinds of damage. In addition to protecting items with great monetary or sentimental value, a curio cabinet provides you with a place where you can prominently display collectibles within your home.
#3: Sort Collectibles by Color
Organizing your collectibles by color is one way to maximize their aesthetic appeal. This method draws attention to your collection as a whole as opposed to individual pieces, and this can work in your favor if you have a vast array of diverse items. Sorting by color works especially well if you have similarly colored items in a variety of shapes and sizes, as this can add a wonderful sense of texture to your collection and the room it sits in.
#4: Get Creative with Displays
While frames and cabinets are the typical go-to’s when displaying collector’s items, consider some creative alternatives as well. For example, if you have a collection of old concert tickets or photographs, you might consider incorporating them into your coffee table.
To customize your coffee table, all you’d need to do is scatter your tickets stubs or photos across the table and then either find a thick glass tabletop to use as a cover or apply a polyurethane coating yourself — and voila! You end up with a one-of-a-kind coffee table in your living room that both show off your memories and serves an important function.
When it comes to displaying your collectibles, there are all sorts of routes you can go. If nothing out there catches your eye, then you might consider making your own display.
Final Thoughts
Once you’ve gone through the trouble of collecting items that fascinate you, you probably don’t want to toss them away in the dark recesses of your closet — you want to place them out in the open, for all to see! By taking these four tips into account, you can create a display for your prized collectibles that will blow anybody away.
