Oil paintings do fade in sunlight, but they’re much more resilient than watercolor paintings. Exposing your oil painting to the sun for a short period will have little or no effect on it. However, you still have to follow some guidelines to make sure your painting will resist fading, even under the sun.
Over the years, there has been more than enough evidence that the heat and ultraviolet rays from the sun can make oil paintings fade. To keep your painting durable, you should try keeping it away from the rays of the sun to preserve 
its bright and vibrant finish, as we acknowledge what the answer to the question Can Oil Paintings Fade in Sunlight? is.
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Why Do Oil Paintings Fade?
It sucks to spend weeks, or even months, making an oil painting, only to see it fade away under the scorching heat of the sun. Many artists believe that oil paintings fade in sunlight, but correlation doesn’t always equal causation. But, do oil paintings really fade under sunlight? Before learning if light from the sun can make your oil paintings fade, it’s important to learn why these paintings fade in the first place.
As expected, heat from the sun is only one of many factors that can make your oil paintings fade. If you keep your paintings away from the sun without paying attention to the other factors, you’ll ultimately end up with faded artwork.
To ensure that doesn’t materialize, I’ll explain most of the factors that can make your oil paintings fade. Knowing all of them will make you take better care of your paintings in the future, reducing the possibilities of your designs fading to near-zero.
Here are some of the main reasons why oil paintings fade:
Pigment Quality
The kind of paint you use to make your oil designs play a large role in its longevity. The paints are made from the pigmentation of a wide range of oils, ranging from linseed oil to walnut oil to make a paint that dries over time but is also smooth enough to make images on a canvas.
However, some of the oils used in making the paints for oil paintings are sensitive to heat. When exposed to heat from either sunlight or other secondary sources, they gradually start to lose their intensity, contributing less to the overall color, causing the paint to fade. This quality is known as the lightfastness of oil pigments.
Most paints have a lightfastness label on their tubes. The higher the lightfastness grade of paint, the more likely it is to fade under light and heat.
Generally, you should aim for a lightfastness grade between I and II. These are the most lightfast paints, and they wouldn’t fade unless you treat them very badly. To put this into perspective, paint with a lightfastness rating of I shouldn’t fade for more than 100 years under regular conditions.
Some special paints like fluorescent colors don’t have a lightfastness rating at all, as many believe they don’t fade at all over time.
If you don’t want your oil paintings to fade under sunlight, sticking with paints with a lightfastness rating of I is your best bet. While the trustworthiness of these ratings is questionable, practical usage shows there is a correlation between the ratings and their longevity.
Varnish
It’s ironic that varnish is applied to oil paintings to protect them from unwanted dirt and discoloration, but the improper application of this material can break your painting.
Oil paintings take a while to dry. Some may dry fully in a few months, while some may take longer than a year to be completely dry. Applying varnish to an oil painting that isn’t fully dry will only result in a damaged painting.
The problem here is obvious; many new artists can’t tell when their painting is dry enough for varnish. Some artists impatiently apply varnish on their paintings too early and the varnish mixes up with the undried oil.
When this happens, it will lead to a couple of irreversible consequences. Firstly, the varnish mixes with the painting immediately, creating a mess of your once beautiful artwork. Secondly, the varnish will accelerate the fading of the painting, making it fade more quickly than it should.
Once you varnish a wet oil painting, there’s no going back. The only solution (which still isn’t a solution) is to destroy the painting, as the varnish will do the exact opposite of what you wanted it to do.
Before attempting to apply varnish on your artwork, confirm that the painting is dry enough to take the coating. You can ask other artist friends before doing it, and you may even leave it without varnish. Most art collectors will varnish the paintings themselves if it isn’t varnished already.
The Sun
Constantly exposing your artwork to the sun can have many impacts on it, and none of these impacts seem to be positive.
Firstly, the ultraviolet rays from the sun can fade your artwork more quickly than you think. The UV light from the sun can break down the chemical bonds that characterize the paint’s color. With these bonds breaking, the color fades gradually over time until it becomes dull and uninteresting.
The heat from the sun also doesn’t treat colors well. If you’ve ever had a piece of colored fabric under sunlight for extended periods, you must have noticed a deterioration in the colors, partly due to the heat of the sun.
Normally, occasionally exposing your artwork to the sun for a couple of minutes won’t magically damage all the colors in your painting. It only becomes a problem when you keep exposing it to sunlight for extended periods without any sort of protection, or if some of the canvas is directly exposed to the sun.
How to Prevent Oil Paintings from Fading
Knowing what makes your oil paintings fade is only half the work. The real task is to prevent these conditions, preserving the original colors of your painting for as long as possible.
In this section, I’ll show you how to keep your oil paintings from fading without compromising on the quality of your artwork:
Use Anti-UV Glass
While the best option is to keep your artworks out of direct sunlight at all costs, you can always use a decent frame that shields against the sun’s ultraviolet rays whenever you need to display your oil painting in the sun.
Many artists don’t trust this approach to preventing fading. Firstly, having the glass may make you overconfident that you start to display your artwork in the sun so often.
However, the rays from the sun, even when shielded, are almost as dangerous as they were unshielded. This means, your painting still has a high risk of fading if you keep displaying it in the sun.
Also, nobody has successfully invented an anti-heat glass. If you can recall from the previous section, UV light, in conjunction with heat are the two major factors that cause your oil paintings to fade when exposed to the sun. Since you only get some degree of protection against the UV light, you’ll still notice the full discoloration effect as a result of the heat.
Summarily, the anti-UV glass may help to protect your oil paintings from fading due to sunlight, but it isn’t perfect. While you have the glass as a protective cover, you should also display your painting in the sun sparingly to ensure it doesn’t fade out.
If light from the sun falls on your paintings through your windows, you may also want to get the same glasses to protect your windows, as regular window glass doesn’t block UV rays.
Put Your Artwork in the Correct Positions
Most artists focus on preventing their artwork from being exposed to UV rays and heat from the sun. However, they pay little attention to the threat that the damning heat from some home appliances poses to their paintings.
To preserve the quality and look of your artwork, you should position it away from heat or light from the sun. In this regard, exposing the rear side of the painting to light from the sun can also damage the artwork, especially if you use canvas.
Also, you may want to keep your artwork away from home appliances that typically generate heat. Some appliances that don’t augur well with oil paintings include cookers, hairdryers, heaters, and electric iron.
To prevent your oil paintings from fading over time, you should keep them in a room with correct ventilation. High humidity fades oil paintings, so you want to make sure the room isn’t only moderately cool, but also completely dry.
In short: keep your oil paintings in a cool and dry place.
absolutely agrees with me.Apply a Varnish Coating
Yes, applying a varnish coating to your painting incorrectly will affect it negatively, but some specific varnish coatings can also protect your oil painting from the fading effect of the sun’s heat and ultraviolet rays.
Some special types of varnish don’t stick with your paintings permanently. Instead, they form an extra removable layer that’s moderately resilient to heat and light. When the paintings start to look dull, you can easily remove the varnish coating to have your painting, good as new.
What’s more, some of these varnishes will work with your painting, even if it’s not completely dry. Before trusting a varnish with your artwork, it’s recommended to read online reviews and watch friends who have used similar varnishes with their paintings.
This way, you know you’re less likely to mess up your painting by applying the wrong coat of varnish over your painting. Even with that, you should try the varnish on a sample painting to see how it pans out before using it on your full drawing.
Can Oil Paintings Fade in Sunlight?
As I’ve emphasized earlier in this piece, sunlight can have a couple of effects on your oil paintings, but none of these effects are positive. Experts around the world unanimously agree that you should shield your oil paintings from the sun to make them more durable.
If you’re on the market for something to protect your paint in the sun, you must have come across anti-UV glass. If you’re going by the marketing material, anti-UV glass can protect your paintings from the UV rays of the sun, preventing them from fading out in the sun.
However, they don’t work as well as you think. Firstly, there is no glass out there that’s capable of blocking 100% of the sun’s UV rays. In essence, regardless of the anti-UV glass you’re buying, your painting will still be exposed to some of the light from the sun.
Also, the ultraviolet rays from the sun aren’t the only quality of the sun that’s capable of destroying your artwork. The heat from the sun can also disorganize the chemical processes retaining your painting’s color.
In short, to be perfectly sure that your oil painting won’t fade in sunlight, you need to find a glass that can block 100% of the sun’s UV rays from your painting. In addition to that, you must also find a way to prevent heat from the sun from affecting your artwork.
Do you know the best way to do all of that at once? Keep your paintings away from sunlight.
Talking about heat, heat from the sun isn’t the only type of heat that’s capable of destroying your painting. Keeping your paintings too close to appliances that emit heat is also dangerous for the vibrancy of your paintings.
In addition to sunlight, many other factors contribute to the speed at which oil paintings fade. If you don’t put all of these factors into consideration, keeping your oil paintings away from the sun is pointless.
Some of these factors include the lightfastness of the oil paintings which refers to the tendency of the oil painting to fade quickly. If you want to keep your painting for as long as possible, always go for a lightfastness rating of I or II.
Also, applying varnish to your oil paintings before they are completely dry can ruin the colors and fade out your designs faster than any heat or UV ray can!