How to frame military medals and challenge coins

People send us a photo of the medals laid flat on a table. Flat on a table, they look flat. They are not. A Purple Heart with its ribbon sits about half an inch off the board once you mount it right. Stack a coin next to it and you are at three quarters. That is the whole job, and most people miss it on day one.

We build these to order in our New Jersey shop. Here is how we think about them.

Depth is the first decision, not the last

A standard picture frame has maybe a quarter inch of space behind the glass. Medals need more. A shadow box gives you a real interior well.

For medals alone, we like 1 inch of usable depth. Add a challenge coin or two and 1.5 inches is safer. If you are including a beret, a patch stack or a folded cover, go to 2 inches.

Measure the thickest item you plan to include. Add a quarter inch of air above it. That is your minimum. Guess low and the acrylic presses on the metal, which is exactly what you were trying to avoid.

Order of precedence is not a design choice

Medals go in order of precedence. Highest goes to the wearer's right, which is the viewer's left as you face the box. From there they run left to right across the top row, then down.

Do not guess at the order. Each branch publishes its own list, and the lists differ. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard all rank things a little differently, and the order changes over the years.

Look up the official list for the branch and the era. Print it. Lay the medals out on your table in that order before anything gets mounted. Families notice when this is wrong, and fixing it later means taking the whole box apart.

Mount through the ribbon, never the medal

Use a fabric-covered backing board. Linen and suede both work well. Suede grips a little and hides pin holes better. Linen looks cleaner under a light.

Stitch or pin through the ribbon. The ribbon is replaceable. The medal is not.

Never glue a medal. Not hot glue, not craft glue, not those foam squares. Glue pulls plating off the back and it cannot be undone. We have opened boxes from other shops and found medals welded to cardboard. There is no good outcome there.

Challenge coins want a hole cut for them

Coins are heavy for their size. A 2 inch coin can run a couple of ounces. Tape will not hold that for ten years, and it will not hold it at all in a warm room.

Two options work. Cut a recessed opening in the mat, sized about a sixteenth of an inch larger than the coin, so the coin drops in and the mat holds the rim. Or set the coin in its own shallow well in the shadow box.

We cut mats to order, so a multi-opening mat with six or eight coin windows is a normal Tuesday for us. Space the openings evenly. Coins crowded together read as clutter.

UV acrylic, because ribbons fade first

Everyone worries about tarnish. The metal is usually fine. The ribbon is what goes.

Ribbon dye fades fast in sun. A bright red gets pink in a few years near a window. The blue on a Distinguished Service ribbon washes out to gray. The metal underneath will still look sharp while the ribbon is ruined.

Use UV-filtering acrylic. It blocks most of the ultraviolet light that does the damage. We use acrylic instead of glass on deep boxes anyway, since it weighs about half as much and will not shatter onto the contents if the box comes off a wall.

The layout most families actually want

The common build is medals plus a photo plus the discharge paperwork. It tells the story without a caption.

A workable size is 16 x 20 inches. Put the medals across the top, the photo lower left, the document lower right. If there are a lot of medals, 18 x 24 gives you room to breathe.

Frame a copy of the document. Never the original. This matters more than people think.

Why the copy rule is not us being fussy

A DD-214 gets requested for VA benefits, for burial in a national cemetery, for home loans, for state veteran programs. It gets pulled out for decades.

Once a document is sealed behind acrylic and taped to a backing board, getting it out cleanly is a real risk. Paper tears at the tape line.

Take the original to a copy shop. Have them print it on decent paper. The copy looks identical behind glazing, and the original stays in a folder where someone can grab it.

A folded flag is a separate box

People ask to add the burial flag to the medal box. It almost never works.

A standard burial flag is 5 x 9.5 feet. Folded into the triangle, it measures roughly 24 to 26 inches on the long edge and stands about 3.5 inches tall at the thickest point. That is a big object.

It needs a purpose-built triangle case. Trying to squeeze it into a rectangular box with medals gives you an oversized frame that is hard to hang and looks off balance. Build the flag case, build the medal box, hang them together on the same wall. That looks intentional.

Questions we hear a lot

Can I open the box later to add a medal?

Yes, if it is built to open. We finish the back so it can be removed with a screwdriver rather than sealed permanently. Ask for that if you expect to add something. Late awards and posthumous awards happen more often than you would guess.

What if the ribbons are already faded or frayed?

You can order replacement ribbons for most awards, and many families do. Mount the original medal on a fresh ribbon and keep the old ribbon in an envelope behind the backing board. It is still there, just not on display. Others prefer the wear as it is. Both choices are reasonable.

What size box do I need for nine medals and four coins?

Usually 16 x 20 inches with 1.5 inches of depth. Nine medals fit across two rows with a little space between them. Four coins take a bottom strip in a cut mat. Send us the count and the thickest item and we will size it before you order.

If you want to see what we build, our military frames start there. Every box is cut here, so the sizes are not fixed to whatever came in a carton.

One last practical note. Hang the box on two hooks, not one. A loaded shadow box runs 6 to 10 pounds, and a single nail lets it drift crooked every time a door slams.