Trophy and Medal Awards Display Ideas

Finding ways to display your kids’ trophies, medals, and ribbons can be a bit of a challenge! I’m sharing two different possible solutions that I’m hoping will inspire you to get those awards out of closet and up on the wall! The first is a simple one for displaying a few trophies and several medals while the second one is a larger display that can be used to showcase 20+ small to medium sized trophies (post includes affiliate links – see my full disclosure statement {here}):

Let’s kick things off with a simple, smaller scale solution for displaying medals or ribbons and a few trophies. I created this display for my daughter after her first year of competing in gymnastics and it has worked beautifully (and was quick and easy to put together)! I started off with a 36″ distressed black ledge shelf that has a flat piece attached to the bottom:

If you have a hard time finding a shelf like mine with a similar piece on the bottom (I found mine at Hobby Lobby!), you could DIY your own by buying a typical crown molding shelf and adding a strip of wood to it. The other thing I bought was several sparkly knobs that I knew my daughter would love (five large knobs and four smaller ones in a slightly different style) with a plan to use them in an alternating pattern:

There are so many amazing knobs to chose from that you can definitely find something that reflects your child’s unique style. You can check out my favorite knobs and pulls in {this post} (links to all knobs and pulls shown below included in that post):

Once I got my shelf and knobs home, I did some math to figure out how far apart the knobs needed to be from one another in order to be evenly spaced.  I placed a length of blue painter’s tape across the bottom piece of my shelf and marked off the correct spacing: Next, I drilled holes for my knobs, being careful to create holes that were large enough for the knobs to screw into but small enough that they would stay firmly in place without need for screw nuts holding them on in the back. Before screwing in the knobs, I cut off a bit of each knob’s post so that once the post was screwed in, it would go most of the way through the wood but not protrude out the back. The easiest way to do this is with this handy too (found {here}):

Then all that was left was to screw the knobs in… done!

We added my daughter’s gymnastics medals:

and then her trophies and a framed picture of her competing in her favorite event – bars:  

Each knob is sturdy enough to support several medals so as she continues on in gymnastics, there’s room for plenty more to be added to her display. There’s also quite a bit more room for trophies on shelf – if it starts to fill up, I’ll probably remove the framed photo from the shelf and replace it with a canvas mounted print hung on the wall behind the trophies. So happy with how it turned out!

If you’re looking for an awards display that’s quite a bit bigger, I love this display that my sister created for her son who’s an amazing chess player:

She used three 24″ shelves on the top and sides and one 36″ shelf on the bottom. The really special part of her display is that she framed four black and white prints (frame sizes are 11″ x 13″) of her son along with a larger framed photo of chess pieces (frame size is 18″ x 18″) in the middle. I just love the balance of the framed photos with the trophy shelves:

The exact shelves that she used are no longer available but these are all good shelving options for creating a similar display (click/tap on images below to shop):

Just be sure that the shelves you choose are deep enough to accommodate the depth of your largest trophies. 

I hope that you found a little inspiration in this post to get going on your own awards display. Have a great weekend everyone!