What is the best way to store old photos?

Store old photos in acid-free (archival) boxes or albums, in a cool, dry, dark place inside your living space — ideally around 65–70°F (18–21°C) and 30–50% relative humidity. Keep prints out of direct sunlight, separate them with acid-free interleaving paper, and make a digital backup as insurance.

Is it bad to store photos in the attic or basement?

Yes. Attics, basements, and garages are the worst places to store photos. They swing between heat and cold, trap humidity, and invite mold, insects, and water damage. Photos last far longer inside the climate-controlled part of your home, like a bedroom closet shelf.

What are acid-free photo boxes?

Acid-free photo boxes are archival storage boxes made from materials with a neutral pH so they don't release acids that yellow and break down prints over time. Look for boxes and albums labeled 'acid-free,' 'lignin-free,' and ideally 'passed the Photographic Activity Test (PAT).'

How do I protect old photos from fading?

Keep photos away from light, especially direct sunlight and fluorescent bulbs, which cause fading. Store them in acid-free enclosures in a stable, cool, dry place, handle prints by the edges, and make a digital copy so the image survives even if the print fades.

How to Store Old Photos So They Last for Decades

To store old photos so they last for decades, keep them in acid-free boxes or albums, in a cool, dry, dark place inside your living space — about 65–70°F (18–21°C) and 30–50% humidity. Separate prints with acid-free interleaving paper, keep them out of sunlight, and never store them in the attic, basement, or garage. Then make a digital backup as insurance.

If you are reading this, the photos are probably already somewhere — a shoebox in the basement, a plastic tub in the garage, a stack of albums in the attic with the black corner mounts. And you are probably the one person in the family who actually opens those boxes. Everyone else says they care, but the boxes live with you. The problem is that the places we tuck photos away to keep them safe are usually the places that damage them fastest.

A photo doesn't fade because it's old. It fades because of where it's been kept — too hot, too damp, too bright. Storage is the difference between a print your grandchildren can hold and a stuck-together brick of color.

The three things that quietly destroy old photographs are humidity, heat, and light. Humidity makes prints stick together and grows mold. Heat speeds up the chemical breakdown of the image. Light fades the colors. Get those three under control and a print can easily outlive everyone who is alive to look at it today. Here is how to do it, step by step.

7 Rules for Storing Old Photos Safely

Rule 1

Move them into acid-free boxes and albums

What to do: Get the photos out of the original cardboard shoebox and the sticky "magnetic" albums from the 80s. Move them into archival, acid-free storage instead. Look for boxes, sleeves, and albums labeled acid-free and lignin-free — and ideally ones that mention passing the Photographic Activity Test (PAT).

Why it matters: Ordinary cardboard and old album pages slowly release acids that yellow prints, fade the image, and make photos stick to the page. Acid-free materials have a neutral pH, so they protect the print instead of attacking it. This single switch does more for long-term survival than anything else on this list.

Start today: Order one acid-free photo box and move your most important prints into it first.

Rule 2

Separate prints with acid-free interleaving paper

What to do: When you stack prints, slip a sheet of acid-free interleaving paper (sometimes called glassine or buffered tissue) between them — especially for older or already-fragile photos. Don't pack the box so tightly that the prints press hard against each other.

Why it matters: Photos that touch in a warm, humid room can fuse together. Once two prints stick, pulling them apart usually tears the image off one of them. A thin sheet of interleaving paper keeps the surfaces from bonding and absorbs small amounts of moisture.

Start today: Add interleaving sheets to the photos that already feel slightly tacky or curled.

Rule 3

Control temperature and humidity

What to do: Aim for a cool, stable spot — roughly 65–70°F (18–21°C) and 30–50% relative humidity. The key word is stable: photos hate big swings far more than a slightly-off constant. A bedroom closet or an interior shelf usually fits without any special equipment. If your home runs damp, a small dehumidifier or a few silica gel packs in the box help.

Why it matters: High humidity grows mold and softens the emulsion. High heat accelerates fading and chemical decay. Constant heating-and-cooling cycles make prints curl and crack. A calm, room-temperature corner of your living space keeps all three problems quiet.

Start today: Pick one interior closet shelf as the new home for your archive — away from radiators and exterior walls.

Rule 4

Keep them in the dark, away from light

What to do: Store boxes and albums in a dark or shaded place. If you display a print in a frame, use a copy and keep the original tucked away, and choose UV-protective glass for anything that hangs in a bright room.

Why it matters: Light is what fades photos — direct sunlight is the worst, but fluorescent and bright daylight do it too, just more slowly. The image you want to protect for fifty years should spend most of those years in a closed box, not on a sunny windowsill.

Start today: Move any photos currently sitting on a windowsill or sunny shelf into a closed, acid-free box.

Rule 5

Handle prints by the edges

What to do: Hold photos by their edges, with clean, dry hands. Don't press your fingertips onto the front of a print. When you write on the back, use a soft pencil or an archival photo-safe pen, gently, near the edge — never a ballpoint or marker pressed hard.

Why it matters: Skin leaves oils and tiny amounts of acid that, over years, etch fingerprints into the surface. Hard pens dent the image from behind. The whole point of careful storage is undone if every handling session leaves a new mark.

Start today: Before your next sorting session, wash and dry your hands — and keep a soft pencil nearby for labeling backs.

Rule 6

Digitize them as insurance

What to do: Scan or photograph your prints so the image also lives as a digital file. As you go, label each scan with who's in it, when, and where — the details most people never wrote on the back. If you want a full walkthrough, see our guide on how to digitize old photos.

Why it matters: Even perfectly stored prints can be lost to a flood, a leak, or a single bad move. A digital copy means the picture survives no matter what happens to the paper. And a labeled scan saves the story before it's forgotten — a photo of strangers in an unfamiliar place becomes meaningless within a generation once nobody can name the faces.

Start today: Scan ten of your most irreplaceable photos and name each file with a date and a name.

Rule 7

Back up digital copies with the 3-2-1 rule

What to do: Once your photos are digital, protect those files too. Follow the 3-2-1 rule: keep 3 copies of every file, on 2 different kinds of storage (for example an external drive and a cloud service like Google Photos or Dropbox), with 1 copy kept off-site — somewhere other than your home.

Why it matters: A hard drive can fail without warning, and a single cloud account can be lost or locked. Three copies in two places means no single failure wipes out your archive. This is especially important for families spread across different cities and countries, where an off-site copy might literally live on another continent.

Start today: Copy your scanned photos to one external drive and one cloud account — that's already two of the three.

The shoebox in the basement and the tub in the garage are not storage — they're slow damage. The two minutes it takes to move photos onto an interior shelf might be the most valuable thing you do for them all year.

Where NOT to Store Old Photos

Most photo damage comes down to one mistake: keeping prints somewhere the temperature and humidity swing wildly. If your photos currently live in any of the places below, moving them is the single fastest improvement you can make.

Checklist

Avoid these places

The attic — bakes in summer, freezes in winter, and the swings curl and crack prints.

The basement — damp and flood-prone; the top spot for mold and stuck-together photos.

The garage — no climate control, plus dust, fumes, and insects.

On top of or beside a radiator, vent, or appliance — concentrated heat speeds fading.

A sunny windowsill or bright shelf — direct light fades colors fast.

Sticky "magnetic" albums and ordinary cardboard boxes — the adhesive and acids quietly destroy prints from the inside.

Better instead: an interior closet shelf, a bedroom, or any living-space cupboard that stays room-temperature year round.

The Storage Method People Actually Open

Here's the honest part. Even a perfectly stored, acid-free, climate-controlled box has one weakness: nobody opens it. The photos are safe, but they're also invisible. The box lives with you, the rest of the family forgets it exists, and the stories inside stay folded away. Good storage protects the paper — it doesn't get the photos seen.

That's why the most reliable place for the photos you love most is often a printed book on a shelf — not a box. A book in the living room gets picked up. It gets opened on holidays, handed to kids, flipped through on a slow afternoon. Compared to a stack of loose prints, a bound book is also easier to keep safe, because there are no sticky pages and nothing to fall out. If you're weighing the two, our piece on photo book vs. photo album breaks down the difference.

This is where a memory book turns storage into something living. With EverStory, you bring the photos and it drafts the story behind each one — so you add the details only you remember, and end up with a printed memory book on archival paper, without doing any design yourself. The box in the basement keeps the photos safe; the book on the shelf keeps them part of the family. Ideally, you do both.

Give your photos a home people actually open

Bring the photos that matter most. EverStory drafts the story behind each one — you add the details only you remember, and it becomes a printed memory book on archival paper.

Start your book

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