The sterilization and protection of painted cultural heritages is an important method to extend their artistic value. This paper briefly explains the damage effects in terms of five factors—cultural heritage-related materials, temperature, humidity, air pollutants and microorganisms—on painted cultural heritage objects, and focuses on the importance of microbial sterilization in the preservation of painted cultural heritage objects. The application and development of chemical, physical and compound sterilization methods in sterilization of painted cultural heritages are summarized, and the advantages and disadvantages of each method are summarized. Chemical methods are the most mature, but most of them have a bad impact on the environment. Physical methods and complex methods are more suitable for green development, but they are constrained by economy, specialization and immature market size. In the future, green and nondestructive methods will become the premise of sterilization of painted cultural heritage objects, and compound methods will become the development trend of future research in this area.