Whether you’re going around the block or across the country, moving house can be a stressful situation. Thus, the last thing you need is to realise your antique, family heirloom furniture has had a side-panel broken in from careless transport. In this article, we’re gonna cover some tips, tricks and secrets on how to safely transport your furniture so you’re able to transition from place A to place B worry-free!

Preparation

Break it down!

While it might be tempting to send off your super king bed frame as a single piece so you don’t have to build it on the other side, the payoff is a little less worth it when you open up your packaging to find a broken slat or snapped headboard when the truck is reopened. So we’d always recommend breaking down your furniture as much as possible to fit as minimal a space as possible.

Our main advice is to break down only the stuff you can easily reassemble once you receive it on the other end, this means your slat beds and dining tables and not your entertainment units and buffets. This is mostly since you have to assemble these units the first time you receive them anyway, and are more than likely designed to be broken down and assembled on a whim, while items such as TV units usually arrive pre-assembled, so dismantling them can actual be harmful to the units’ build quality as it wasn’t designed to be rebuilt on a whim.

Make them solid!

As an addition to the above point, making your items as “simple” as possible can avoid a lot of headache where necessary. The end goal is to have items essentially function as ‘blocks’ so that when time comes to put them on the truck, the carriers can essentially play Tetris without needing to worry about what item they’re putting where.

This means removing the removable shelves and tying shut any cabinet doors to ensure there are no ‘moving parts’ to these packages. If you’re able to, it often pays to flip the handles of units to the inside of any drawers/cupboards as this makes the furniture more square and removes the likelihood of the handle being broken off or worse yet, puncturing through the wood! To reiterate, we want the furniture to be as solid a square block as possible so the lesser the area of failure the better.

If your unit has removable shelves but you’re unable to find a safe place to put them (or they physically can’t be removed from within the unit.) Another alternative is to wedge softer material yet firm material, such as cardboard or a folded piece of paper, where the shelf sits. This should ideally stop the shelf from wobbling in transport while also meaning you can remove the wedge once the item has found its new home. However, you want to ensure that the shelf is snug between the wedge and the rest, which can require some trial and error possibly alongside needing some elbow grease.

Packing Materials

If you’re moving any larger piece of furniture from A to B, using the appropriate packing material for the job can ensure that when you arrive at location B you’re bring back a high quality piece of furniture and not just a bunch of scrap ready to go to the dump, thus this next section will cover some common packing materials, what situation they’re best used for and where to look for them.

Cardboard

Cardboard is great for wedging between pieces of furniture or as a “scratch-free” work surface, however, unless the cardboard is big enough or you’re ok with taping directly onto the furniture, cardboard should be used mainly for short trips such as across town or just quick journeys with very few sharp turns. 

The only exception however, is if you have a cardboard box the item can comfortably fit within. This means the item fits snugly between the walls of cardboard or at least having something to fill the empty space between the item and the box. This full surround of protection is far better than just regular sheets of cardboard and means the unit is able to go on longer haul transports with little risk of the item being damaged if stored correctly.

If you’re looking at smaller pieces of cardboard and need to protect your furniture for longer haul transport. Then, we’d recommend making some cardboard corners to protect the edges and points of your furniture. The edges are simple: just fold the cardboard to hang over the portion you want protected, however, protecting the points requires a little more thought in that you need a square piece of cardboard (or close enough to a square), then do the following:

1. Mentally split the square into four smaller squares, as such,

2. Make a cut between squares 3 and 4 but starting from the bottom of 1 and 2.

3. Fold 3 and 4 upwards creating an L shape.

4. Fold 1 and 2 into each other so that 3 and 4 follow suit.

Bonus: Use a bit of tape or some other form of bonding 3 and 4 together to keep this shape in transport

Using cardboard corners in this way in combination with other packing methods can really protect your furniture for long haul transport and be the difference between a scratched edge and the furniture looking as new as the day you bought it.

Blankets

Another commonly found material perfect for transporting furniture for short distances are blankets. Just throw them on top of the given item and it now should be protected from any rubbing against any other surfaces in the vehicle. The great thing about blankets is any piece of material can realistically be used for this purpose, whether it’s your set of bathroom towels to the spare bedroom sheets, they all should protect your furniture in some way.

The issue with blankets however, is not the damage they’ll do to your furniture, but the damage your furniture could possibly do to your covering. As such, we wouldn’t recommend using your prized 1000 thread count linens to protect your chest of drawers, lest you risk them ripping or getting pulled in the process. If you’re looking to purchase some dedicated blankets for this purpose, they can cost a pretty penny for something you’ll rarely use unless you’re a moving company.

Therefore, the best situation to use blankets in is when you’re using a short range moving service, as they’ll likely have plenty of blankets to protect your goods so you won’t need to make a tough decision between protecting either your blanket box or the blankets within. However, if you’re picking up a singular piece of furniture you bought second-hand, we’d definitely recommend bringing some type of protective sheet to put in the back so it arrives without a scratch!

Cling Wrap

Not just for wrapping up your sandwiches, cling wrap is great for protecting your furniture from any smudges and marks that may occur in transport. Best used on furniture that’s got a clean colour scheme that easily shows marks, cling wrap works great in combination with other packing methods but is quite lousy at protection standalone. 

The biggest issue with cling wrap is its thinness, meaning it’s no use in protecting against anything that could cause a scratch. But combine the wrap with a blanket, then the now condensed nature of the blanket makes it much harder for the offending object to move the blanket out of the way. Thus it’s better to think of cling wrap as an addition rather than a first option in the same way you wouldn’t make a meal out of only cheese.

The great thing about packing wrap is its price and longevity, a singular roll costs far less than some other packing solutions and will easily wrap multiple objects before needing another roll. It’s also up to you in terms of how much you use, you can wrap the whole item around multiple times over if you’re handing it over to a moving company and want to ensure as much protect as possible, but if it’s just going into the back of a truck to travel across town, you can easily just wrap the main body of the unit and protect the exposed areas with the blankets and cardboard mentioned above.

Bubble wrap

While bubble wrap may be great for packaging smaller items, for furniture it can be quite lousy in terms of its protection, especially for the cost. The issue mainly stems from the benefits it has for smaller items: its thin flexibility and only really “activating” to break the fall of the item in question. Most furniture is quite often large and heavy, so any effect the bubble wrap could have in protecting an item is immediately removed as the weight of the item immediately breaks the protective layer when fallen.

However, like the cling wrap, the bubble wrap functions better as an addition rather than a first layer. If the item in question is quite large, then you can try to cover the rest of the item with a tougher material such as cardboard and use bubble wrap as a “window” for key areas you may want the moving people to avoid, such as the fronts of cabinets. The idea is that since you’re protecting a smaller area, you can utilise more bubble wrap to protect these areas better as double wrapping will obviously provide more protection but can end up costly if trying to do it for the whole unit.

This then leads into the final con of bubble wrap: its expense. Large rolls of bubble wrap can easily get quite expensive and considering it doesn’t do that great of a job, then it’s kinda not worth it. We’d only recommend using bubble wrap if you have some leftover from packing your smaller items into boxes and can use it in combination with other materials to make it less of a first defence.

Foam wrap

The final packing material we would recommend as an absolute go to would be foam wrap. Foam wrap functions essentially the same as bubble wrap but is less based on shock-protection and more of a focus on general protection. As a result, foam wrap helps avoid any unwanted scratches and scuffs that may occur when moving a product covered in it while staying flexible enough on larger surfaces to avoid shredding and tearing like other materials.

Where foam wrap excels, however, is its ability to be reused over and over again! This means that if you’re going for multiple trips or if you know you’ll need to move out in a couple of months anyway, then you can easily reuse the foam wrap if you’re careful in the unwrapping process. If the furniture is going for a longer trip then you can combine the foam wrap with the cling wrap to keep the packaging all better bundled together.

The only con with foam wrap is its expense: it’s similar pricing-wise as bubble wrap but this is less of an issue when you consider that it’s also reusable. Another con is also the fact it isn’t transparent, so if you’re shipping something particularly fragile such as a display cabinet, then we’d recommend getting the printer ready to add some fragile labels.

Packing

When it comes to packing up furniture, efficiency is key! You want to ensure that the main areas are protected as much as possible without being over-kill and having the item turn into a giant marshmallow. Thus, our best advice is to cover what you can! It’s obviously more important to protect the front and top of a lowboy than its back.

If you’re looking for packing instructions, then the following is a general guide on how we would package an item:

What you need:

Foam wrap

Cling wrap

Packing tape

Bonus: 8x Cardboard corners

What to do:

1. Roll out enough foam wrap to cover the unit's legs, sides and top. Ideally, the ends of the packaging should overlap on the top as that’s most likely the “money maker”

2. Place the furniture in the middle of the rolled-out foam (If you have cardboard corners, this is when we’d put them on both the top and underneath the legs of the unit.)

3. Fold the foam wrap around the furniture, ensuring the double layer on top, and tape it down, ensuring to tape on the wrap, NOT the furniture.

4. If the wrap isn’t quite sitting flush with the unit, then we’d recommend folding it into itself and taping that down also, the closer to the original shape the better.

5. If there are sections exposed you’d like to see covered and you have additional material, we would recommend cutting enough off to cover the area and taping onto where the unit has already been wrapped.

6. Now the unit has been covered in foam wrap, this is where we’d recommend surrounding the unit in cling wrap to tighten the package. We would recommend covering the top and spiralling down the unit to cover the body, then tipping the unit on its side to get the bottom of the unit alongside an additional covering on the body of the unit.

At this point, it’s entirely up to you with how you want to treat the unit, you can get pedantic and start labelling everything so you know which furniture mummy is which, or you can treat the whole experience as a mid–year Christmas morning, opening everything without knowing what’s inside.

As for some additional hints on the packing progress, here are some major ones that help us out when we need to ship an item:

• Chairs can be odd as their shape isn’t quite as rectangular as you think. Thus, we would recommend packing the chair in two parts, the seat and the backrest. This way, you avoid the giant sail look that happens if you try to pack it as one.

• If you’re handing the item over to a carrier, and you don’t have quite enough material to fully cover the unit. We’d recommend leaving a “window” to the front of the unit. Whether it’s with bubble wrap or straight cling wrap, showing the courier where to avoid picking up the unit can help keep the chance of the item being noticeably damaged down.

Shipping

When it comes to sending off an item there are two ways to go about it: either rent a truck and deliver the items to the new location yourself, or pay a guy who has a truck to deliver it for you. Either way, you want to make sure that the vehicle has enough space for your given items and that you can easily Tetris as many given items into the vehicle as possible.

When it comes to renting a guy with a truck, we’d definitely recommend looking at google reviews, as you want to make sure that you’re getting the “good” guys and not the “okay” ones. Refer their score to the amount of reviews they have and read a couple of them. are the 1-star reviews seeming to be specifically one-off cases or do they seem common? Even refer to the dating as a 1-star review from 6 years ago might not apply as much today.

Prepare For Damages

While we would like to say as soon as your items are on the truck you don’t need to worry anymore, the unfortunate truth is that damages can still happen, either by complete accident or from a reckless delivery driver.

Thus, we’d recommend “taking stock” in terms of whether you’re happy to risk the chance of an item being damaged in transport. We’d also highly recommend contacting your carrier to let them know the situation so that they’re able to take the proper precautions when transporting said items.

As for how to avoid damages, if you’ve packed similar to how we have recommended, you shouldn’t have to worry about the majority of damages. We would also recommend printing off some fragile labels to stick on the outside of the packaging. Ideally the carriers should be handling your items with caution regardless of the item, but the label can also act as a bit of security as it’s definitely on them if something goes wrong in the transport process.

It may also pay to separate items if it means saving the more fragile parts of the items. Glass display cabinets in particular should have a way to remove the shelves within, so even if it means taking them yourself, we’d recommend wrapping those in blankets and sending them separately as they definitely require more care.

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide has assisted in ensuring that your precious furniture makes it from A to B in one piece! While initially a daunting task, the packing process can become a fun sort of origami as you figure out the best way to pack each item.

Whether you’re loading it into the back of a moving truck or the family station wagon, you should have little to no issues with transporting furniture if it’s packed securely and doesn’t move around in the back of the vehicle.

FAQ

Where can I get packing material for cheap?

When it comes to sourcing material such as cardboard and blankets for packing, our best advice is to dig through your own cupboards and recycling bins first! From cereal boxes to TV screen boxes, they can all come in use when time comes to move.

Our other best recommendation would be to ask any local store if they have any cardboard they no longer need or want. Ideally, the bigger, the better so ask around any variety of store to see what they have. We would also recommend asking any variety of furniture stores as they generally receive larger boxes for their products meaning you receive more cardboard and boxes big enough to fit entire units. 

However, don’t feel entitled to this cardboard either as stores often reuse this cardboard for their own needs, such as delivering store units or items that may have lost their original packaging one way or another, so instead, we’d always recommend taking what you can.