A complete theory of gravity impels us to go beyond Einstein's General Relativity. One promising approach lies in a new class of teleparallel theory of gravity named f (Q), where the nonmetricity Q is responsible for the gravitational interaction. The important roles any of these alternative theories should obey are the energy condition constraints. Such constraints establish the compatibility of a given theory with the causal and geodesic structure of space-time. In this work, we present a complete test of energy conditions for f (Q) gravity models. The energy conditions allowed us to fix our free parameters, restricting the families of f (Q) models compatible with the accelerated expansion our Universe passes through. Our results straight the viability of f (Q) theory, leading us close to the dawn of a complete theory for gravitation.