Find out how to extend the life of your exhibition stand to save you time, money, and stress

While they should be an essential part of your events and marketing strategy, attending exhibitions is an investment: not just financially, but in terms of time, effort, and resources, too.

And undoubtedly, the most significant expense is your exhibition stand. 

But, by thinking ahead, choosing the right materials, and taking care of your stand between shows, you can extend its lifespan, cut costs, and boost your exhibition return on investment (ROI) year after year.

Here are our top practical tips on how to design, maintain, and adapt your exhibition stand so it stays looking fresh and professional for multiple events – without compromising on impact.

Plan for long-term use

The most important step in being able to use your stand multiple times, is to plan to use it multiple times!

That might sound like an obvious thing to say, but this is a crucial – and often overlooked – stage of the exhibition planning process.

Ensure you know which shows you’re attending, the size of the spaces you’ve booked, and how many of those events you plan to use your stand for; then pass all this information to your exhibition stand contractor. 

For example, if you have four shows scheduled for the next year, your contractor can design and create an exhibition stand for the first show, which can then be dismantled, reconfigured, and reconstructed for the remaining three events. Walls can be moved, stand elements can be relocated, new graphics can be added, and before you know it, it looks like you’ve got a new stand. It’s the ideal way to avoid those repeat visitors getting a sense of déjà vu, maximises your event budget, and makes exhibiting more sustainable.

Of course, if you’ve booked a 12m² space for one show and a 60m² for another, then sadly you won’t be able to just “copy and paste” your stand and will need extra elements building. However any good stand contractor will still be able to reuse and recycle most of your smaller stand to prevent you having to start from scratch.

Use durable materials for your exhibition stand graphics

Another reason why it’s so important to plan ahead and let your stand contractor know what you’re up to for the next 12 months is so they can work out which materials are best for your exhibition stand.

If you need something that strikes the perfect balance between durability and customisation, then good-old-fashioned timber and paint is the way to go. Instead of having to create a new graphic for every show, your stand contractor can build a wall, paint the design on it, and then make any required touch-ups for the next show.

Painted graphics look fantastic, and they’re easy to amend, but they’re not a quick solution. Using paint means your stand can’t be constructed in one day. The walls need to be painted, left to dry (usually overnight), and then building can start; so this might increase the labour costs. 

If you prefer a more modern approach than paint and wood, the most durable option is an aluminium framework (which can be hired), paired with fabric graphics. However, the graphics should be bought fresh for each show so it’s not the most long-life option out there! 

If you’re using a modular exhibition system you can sometimes get away with using fabric designs a couple of times, but any more than that and they start to look really tired. Plus, if you’re mounting products onto walls or fixing things like shelving, you’ll be left with lots of holes, which means you’ll need new graphics after the first use (or opt for very clever placement of your wall-mounted element next time round!).

Consider what your exhibition stand will be used for

When you’re choosing durable surfaces for your exhibition stand, start by thinking about how it’ll be used.

If your space is purely going to be used for meetings, networking, and demos using tech and screens, then you just need to think about which graphics options are best for you.

But if you require space for immersive activities – like cooking, or construction demos – then you need to think about the durability of your surfaces, too. 

If you need a kitchen area, go for a laminated worktop – it’s tough, smart-looking, and easy to maintain. For more commercial or heavy‑use environments, a metal worktop is a better choice as it can handle far more wear and tear.

For counters and general worktops, consider a sprayed MDF finish or a laminated finish. Laminate is the more hard‑wearing option, but it’s harder to touch up if it gets damaged. Painted finishes can be repaired more easily, but they’re more likely to pick up knocks and scuffs during transport and installation.

Maintaining your stand between shows if you’re storing it yourself

If most of your exhibition spaces are small shell-scheme stands with things like pop-up banners, fabric walls, and modular light-boxes, then storing your equipment (and building the stand) yourself is a viable option (or you might want to consider hiring your exhibition stand).

These pieces of kit are designed to be flat-packed for quick and easy installation and dismantling – but you still need to take care of them otherwise you’ll find you have to invest in more stand elements quicker than you’d bargained for.

When it comes to the last day of the show, don’t just chuck everything in a bag at 5 pm and run to the nearest pub: remove everything carefully, store it in the right container, label it, make an inventory, and ensure it’s well-wrapped and protected. Not only will this ensure your stand can be reused over and over again, it will also make it much easier for you (or any other team members) when it comes to putting the stand up next time around. Future you will thank current you; we promise!

Once you get back to your storage facility, make sure your exhibition stand is stored in a dry environment (especially if your kit contains lots of fabric or timber), that you’re not stacking loads of boxes on top of one another (unless they’re specifically designed for that), and that everyone knows those boxes contain your show kit. We’ve genuinely heard of customers’ stands getting damaged because they’ve not been labelled and then the boxes have been picked up and dropped by a forklift.

Budgeting for an exhibition stand that lasts

If your plan is to reuse your custom exhibition stand as many times as possible, that’s great! 

But you need to tweak your budget accordingly and think about when you might need to dip into your funds, because it’s not just a one-off expense.

(A quick note here: for this blog, we’re talking purely about the design of your custom exhibition stand. Costs like rigging, electricity, water, and general show costs also need to be factored in!).

The first show will obviously be the most expensive because you’re paying for the stand and everyone that goes on it, plus all of the work that goes into the planning, designing, and construction.

Going forward, the cost will vary but will decrease as it’s reused and recycled for other events. So, let’s say your initial stand cost £50k. You might not have to pay anything extra for the second event. For the third event, it might require a £10k reconfiguration, and for the final event, it might just need a £3k spruce up and some general maintenance.

So, while the initial investment is by far and away the biggest one, you need to leave some money aside for future tweaks because it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to just churn out the exact same stand time and time again.

• Storage. You’ve got to store it somewhere! You can pay a stand contractor to do this for you (this is usually done on a per-annum basis), or you can store it yourself. Very few businesses have the space to keep a 60m² exhibition stand in their offices, so you’ll probably need to pay for offsite storage.

• Shipping. One of the downsides of storing your stand yourself is that the next time you need to use it, you’ll have to pay to transport it to your stand contractor’s site or the exhibition venue. This often works out more expensive than just paying the per-annum storage costs with your stand contractor.

• Maintenance. The nature of exhibitions means that, with the best will in the world, things do get damaged. There’ll be natural wear and tear, scuffs, scratches to paintwork and graphics. It’s unavoidable! So, you need to factor in the cost of your stand getting a bit of TLC every now and then.