Drawing on published reports of experiments in museum climatology, an attempt has been made to propose a standardization of terminology by grouping and classifying the more commonly used types of case construction designs. The formulation of a typology for different museum climate systems was also developed simultaneously. Case studies in which different methods have been used to create microclimates within museum cases are used to illustrate the usefulness of such a typology. It is intended to tighten up language and interpretation in a field characterized by the use of either imprecise terms, such as ventilated, sealed, hermetically sealed and airtight to describe qualitatively the sealedness of a case, or complex mathematical formulae to quantify the leakiness of a case in terms of microclimate control.