How To Display An Urn In Your Home & Where to Put it

Losing a loved one is akin to having the ground you stand on yanked right below your feet. Your whole life crumbles and the whole world seems to spin faster and for a while, you will have a hard time keeping up. However, as you go through the funeral arrangements, and recall fond memories with your departed beloved, a feeling grows on you– the need to pull off the best and most solemn funeral that you know your loved one truly deserves. And depending on the general consensus among immediate family members, two options are often available: burial or cremation. 

For those who opt for cremation, you have a number of things to decide on. The type of urn, what to do with the ashes after the funeral rites, and where to scatter or store the ashes after the cremation, among many other things. 

More traditional families keep urns containing the ashes of departed family members in their homes. Perhaps as a long and ever continuing tradition, or just as a communal way of coping with grief. 

Should your decision fall on keeping the urn in the house, the next thing you must think about is how to display an urn in your home. And exactly where to put an urn in your home. It is important that you find a way to grieve your loss without ruining the overall aesthetics of your place. Keep in mind that if your surroundings look great and organized, you feel better. 

In the paragraphs that follow, you will learn more about that. 

What Exactly Is An Urn?

By denotation, an “urn” is defined as a tall rounded vase with a base, and often a stem, especially one used for storing the ashes of a cremated person.

While various historical records seem to show that the first urns used for the mentioned purpose were made of clay, at present, urns are made of various materials such as marble, metal, natural stone, wood, ceramic, and even glass. 

Why It’s So Important To Learn How To Display An Urn In Your Home

Having a good sense of how to display an urn in your home is important because dealing with grief properly is the only way to move on and move forward in life. In the early parts of grief, it is normal for you to want to just stay near the urn, or see it as often as possible throughout the day. After all, the wounds are still fresh, and it might take a while before you can learn to talk about and think about your departed beloved in the past tense. 

Be that as it may, possessing the sensibilities and knowing where to put an urn in your home that is most comforting for you and the rest of the family might help you process your grief and accept the new reality created by your loss. 

At the same time, as you go through the stages of grief, it is also necessary to create a little semblance of order externally even if you are dealing with internal chaos that is so massive you can barely function. This is another reason why it is worth knowing how to display an urn in your home. 

Moreover, you want to keep the urn safe from falling and breaking as much as possible so all these things are crucial considerations and are important reasons why you should know exactly where to put an urn in your home. 

First Things First - Where To Put An Urn In Your Home

What you have to consider when deciding where to put an urn in your home is the general safety of the urn. It just has to be somewhere where it won’t be in danger of falling and breaking. Among the ideal places are the following:

Living Room

The living room is a popular option as most houses have living rooms. At the same time, this is the one area in the house where one’s powdery ash cannot be mistaken for condiment (we’re not kidding, in some rare cases, this happens!). 

The living room also gets a lot of foot traffic so it is ideal for those who wish to still feel close to their departed loved ones. You can position the urn on any steady surface/table around the living room. 

Home Chapel

Of course, not all family homes are built with a chapel just for the family’s private use. But those who have a chapel at their disposal may allot one corner as the resting place of a beloved family member’s urn. This way, anyone who wishes to just hang out and speak with the departed in their own special way, can have a private and solemn moment with their dearest departed, in the presence of God as well. 

A room intended for family urns

Those who have a tradition to uphold and whose generations of family members have opted to be cremated must have in their ancestral homes a room intended solely for urns of family members. This may just be the perfect place for another urn.   

A special corner in the bedroom

If you want to keep the urn safe and away from the view of guests when they visit, you may also just pick a special corner in the bedroom to store away your loved one’s urn. Perhaps you can use a shelf on the wall, or an allotted space in the closet. You may also bring in an altar and position it somewhere in the bedroom. 

This way, your departed loved one can still hold a place in the bedroom you once shared. 

How To Display An Urn In Your Home: Creative Tips To Honor A Loved One

So again, how do you display an urn in your home in a way that you honor your departed beloved while keeping the urn safe at the same time? Check out our tips below.

Next to a collection of their favorite books 

Some people leave not only loved ones yearning for them but also a vast collection of many great books. It would be very meaningful to keep their urns in a special space next to these books. It could also work if you place the urn on top of a shelf. Every now and then, when you are feeling sentimental, you can place a vase of freshly picked flowers next to the urn. 

Other than their books, you may also include in their printed copies of articles they wrote or were written about them. 

On top of a memorial structure built just for them in the garden

Another great tip is building in your garden some sort of a monument dedicated for the departed. It can be made of bricks or some other material of a more rustic look. Ideally, one that can withstand both the scorching heat and rainy weather. Embossed on it should be the name of the departed, and the date of birth and death. As well as a saying he/she may have lived by. 

Around this monument, make sure there are pretty flowers. You may even plant around it some of the remaining flowers from the funeral so they won’t be wasted. 

In a glass cabinet along with other artifacts from their lives

When we lose the people we love in death, we look for all sorts of ways to remember them. It simply is hard to let go. But you’ll find that, having a space allotted just for them, that houses all of their memoirs somehow eases the pain. We look at their stuff and remember the wonderful life they lived and the amazing people they were. 

So a great way to honor a loved one that has passed is by collecting all of the things that were relevant in their lives and storing them in a large glass cabinet. 

In the middle of it all, you can position the urn, and right behind it, a portrait of the departed. Then you can go ahead and fill this glass cabinet with every little thing that was important to the person and the life he/she lived. 

In a dedicated memorial space next to their portrait

Somewhere around the house, you can hang a giant portrait of the departed. Perhaps along the hallway, or on the wall right at the top of the stairs. You can place a console table right there, make sure that it is not wobbly, and then on it, you can keep the urn. 

Around the urn you may also place candles and some vase that you can put fresh flowers into.

Other Tips For Honoring A Lost Loved One

What we have discussed above are just things that address the question: how to display an urn in your home. 

There are so many other ways for you to honor a lost loved one. Think about the story of Taj Mahal. The deeper the love, the grander the ways of honoring a dead loved one. 

You can raise funds in the person’s honor and use it to support a cause that was near and dear to the departed’s heart, something that he/she truly lived for. You may also put up a foundation for his advocacies. You can name after them an infrastructure built in their honor, long after they are gone. You can also organize marathons or environmental walks, really, whatever you can think of.

A much simpler but equally meaningful way of honoring a lost loved one on the other hand is creating an online memorial page for them. On this page, you may include a story of their lives, important milestones, and favorite memories you have of them. This can be in the form of videos and photographs showing how much of an adventure their lives had been. 

This way, you can preserve their memories in the digital world, free from decay that is often the problem with printed photographs and tangible memorabilia. 

Create An Online Memorial Page at Forevory

A virtual memorial page is one of the best ways to preserve the memories of your loved ones. At the same time, you allow everyone else who cared for them to partake in the process by visiting their memorial page online and reminiscing memories shared with them. 

The idea of putting out online memorial photos, online memorial guest books, and even online memorial stories for dear friends to see is great. Why? Because you provide an avenue for everyone whose lives have been touched by the departed, to channel their own grief.

Mourning after all is never a straight line, you can feel like you have let go and moved on today, and then feel a deeper and more disabling sadness tomorrow. 

Having a virtual memorial page that people can go to at any time they feel the need to just face the reality of their loss is a great way to help everyone navigate the grieving process. 

What makes this all the more special is that, even future generations of kin may access it. This will make it easy for future generations to learn about their ancestors and take pride at the integrity and accomplishment of a descendant’s life. 

Final Thoughts On Where & How To Display An Urn In Your Home

You now have your sensibilities in the right place. Dealing with the loss of a loved one is perhaps one of the most excruciating things you will ever experience in life. But there are still things you can do for them even when they have already passed. 

Making an effort to honor their memory will not only be comforting for you alone. You also get to make sure that their legacy lives on through the channels you pick in honoring their memory. 

At Forevory, you will find the most ideal avenue for your grief and it doubles as a channel for honoring the memory of your departed loved one, too. Check out our unique and innovative suggestion for making your loved one’s legacy alive, do that by visiting our page right now.