Taking care of your acoustic piano during the summer months is crucial to ensure its longevity and performance. Here are some top tips to keep your prized instrument safe and healthy:
1. Keep Your Piano Away from Windows: While it might be tempting to play your piano near an open window during a summer breeze, prolonged exposure to heat and humidity can damage the wood.
Aim for approximately 42% humidity in the room—too much or too little can cause problems like tuning issues and cracked soundboards.
2. Invest in a Humidifier: If your home’s humidity levels regularly fall outside the ideal range, consider using a humidifier or dehumidifier.
Maintaining around 42% humidity helps prevent warping and other issues.
You can find various humidifiers online or even position a couple of plants in the piano room to increase humidity naturally.
3. Protect Your Piano from Direct Sunlight: UV rays from sunlight can fade and damage your piano’s finish over time.
Use blinds, curtains, or piano dust covers to shield your instrument from direct sunlight.
4. Keep the Room Simple and Clutter-Free: Clutter can affect airflow and temperature regulation. Maintain a clean, organized piano room to ensure optimal conditions for your instrument.
5. Play Your Piano Regularly: Regular use helps maintain the piano’s internal components and prevents stagnation. Plus, playing is good for your soul!
If you have spent any time on YouTube, Spotify, or TikTok in 2026, you have almost certainly heard it: the unhurried piano chord, the soft crackle of vinyl, the gentle rain in the background, the tempo that never rushes. Lo-fi music — specifically its piano-centered variants — has become the defining sonic backdrop of concentrated work, study, and intentional rest for a generation of listeners. And it is doing something unexpected in the process: it is turning passive listeners into curious beginners.
Something is happening in piano studios across the country that teachers from a generation ago would find surprising, and perhaps gratifying: the students walking in for first lessons are increasingly not children. They are adults in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond — people who took a few lessons as kids and stopped, or who never started at all, and who have decided, in 2026, that now is the time.
Every few years, a piano competition produces a result that changes the conversation about what classical music is, who plays it, and where it is going. The Van Cliburn Competition's 2022 discovery of Yunchan Lim was that kind of moment. In 2026, the competition circuit — from New Orleans to Salt Lake City to the Pacific Northwest — has continued to surface talent that makes a compelling case for the health of the art form, even as the broader classical industry navigates a complex moment.
