A Room-by-Room Packing Guide from Professional Movers

Most damaged items in a house move are not damaged in transit. They are damaged at the kitchen table, the night before the lorry arrives, by someone trying to wrap a wine glass in a tea towel at half past ten with the kettle on. Moving fragile items safely is mostly about giving yourself enough time and using the right materials. The cardboard, the bubble wrap and the labels do the work. The crew on the day just carries what you have already protected.

We have been packing and moving families across Bedfordshire and the wider Home Counties since 2002. AIM and MoveAssured approved and rated 4.8 stars on Reallymoving, most of our work still comes from word of mouth in Houghton Regis, Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard, Luton and Milton Keynes. Questions on fragile items come up on almost every home survey. The guide below is the one our team walks customers through, written out in full so you can use it whether you book a removals firm or pack everything yourself. If you would like an in-person estimate and a tailored removals quote, the form takes a minute.

Which Items Need Special Protection?

Three categories deserve a different level of care to the rest of your contents.

Fragile items are anything that breaks if you drop it from waist height. Glassware, china, ceramics, picture frames, lamps, vases, wine bottles, kitchen appliances with glass doors, mirrors, electronics with screens, and most light fittings sit in this group.

Valuable items are anything where the replacement cost is high enough to hurt. Televisions, laptops, watches, cameras, audio equipment, designer handbags, tools, musical instruments, and any electrical item still under warranty. The risk here is not only breakage. Boxes can also be lost during a long-distance leg if they are not labelled and tracked properly.

Sentimental items are the ones that cannot be replaced at any price. Wedding albums, christening gowns, your grandmother’s tea set, the urn on the mantelpiece, your child’s first artwork, a service medal, the framed photograph that has hung in the hallway since 1987. Treat these with more care than the valuables, because there is no insurance figure that puts them right.

If you sit down with a notepad and walk each room, you will usually find around fifty items between the three groups in an average three-bedroom house. That is the list that needs proper packing. The rest is bedding, clothing and books, and those forgive a lot. Our room-by-room packing guide covers the everyday items in full.

The Best Packing Materials for Fragile Items

A good fragile pack uses five materials, and the one that costs nothing is also the one that matters most: time.

Double-walled cardboard boxes do most of the work. Single-walled supermarket boxes will not survive a stack of six in a lorry. We supply double-walled book boxes, tea chests and dish-pack cartons to every customer who books a move with us, and we sell them on their own to anyone who needs extras.

Bubble wrap is the second layer. Use the small bubble for direct contact with delicate surfaces such as glass and polished wood, and the large bubble as a cushion around the outside.

Packing paper is the third layer and the one most people skip. Plain newsprint and butcher’s paper give you a wrapping flexibility that bubble wrap cannot, and they fill the gaps inside hollow items so they do not collapse under pressure.

Foam pouches and corner protectors handle the awkward shapes. Stemmed glassware, lampshades, picture frame corners and television corners all need a bespoke piece, not a generic wrap.

Tape and a permanent marker finish the job. Use proper packing tape, not parcel tape from the corner shop. Label every box with the room, the contents in one line, and the word FRAGILE on at least two sides if it applies.

Two things to avoid: do not use printed newspaper for white china or wedding dresses, because the ink transfers, and do not use bin bags for soft furnishings going to storage, because they sweat and bring damp into the unit.

How to Pack Glassware, Ceramics and Kitchenware

Glassware and ceramics are forgiving if you build the box from the bottom up.

Line the base of a tea chest or dish-pack carton with a generous layer of crumpled packing paper, around two inches deep. Wrap each glass individually, paper first then a single turn of small bubble wrap, with the open end tucked closed. Stand glasses upright in the box, never on their sides. Heavier pieces go at the bottom, lighter pieces on top, with crumpled paper between every layer.

Plates travel on their edges, not flat. Stack them upright like records in a sleeve, each one wrapped in paper, packed tightly enough that they do not move when you tilt the box. A flat stack of plates breaks under the weight of the plate above.

Bowls nest into one another with paper between each one, then go into the box upright in pairs.

Knife blocks travel with the knives wrapped separately and the block packed in soft furnishings. Slow cookers and stand mixers come out cleanly into their original boxes if you have kept them. If not, double-box them with bubble wrap between the inner and outer layer.

Finish every kitchen carton with a final layer of crumpled paper at the top before you close the lid. The aim is for nothing to shift when you give the closed box a gentle shake.

How to Protect Artwork, Mirrors and Electronics

Artwork and mirrors travel on their edges in custom flat boxes, not in tea chests. Wrap the face in acid-free tissue first, then a layer of bubble wrap with corner protectors, then slip it into the flat box. Tape across the front of any glazed picture in a star pattern with low-tack masking tape, so if the glass does break the shards are held in place rather than scattered into the canvas.

Televisions are the item we are asked about most often. The original box is always the right answer if you still have it. If not, we use a custom television carton with foam inserts, and we record the serial number on the inventory before it goes on the lorry. Disconnect cables in advance, photograph the back of the unit so you know what plugs into what, and bag the cables with a label.

Laptops and tablets travel with you in the car, not on the lorry. The same is true for jewellery, passports, cash, prescription medication and the contents of your home safe. Anything that cannot be replaced, or is needed within twenty-four hours of arrival, travels with the family.

Hard drives, gaming consoles and audio receivers go into double-walled boxes with bubble wrap on all six sides. Lampshades sit on their own in dedicated boxes, never under anything else. For the wider detail on protecting larger pieces, our professional movers’ guide to furniture protection covers sofas, beds and wardrobes.

How to Move Antiques and Sentimental Belongings

Antiques are where the adviser’s survey visit pays for itself. We talk through each piece on the inventory, agree which need a bespoke wrap, which need our Defenda Guard protective covers, and which need dismantling before they leave the room. Polished wood needs blanket wrap and corner protectors, never plastic in direct contact with the surface, because veneer lifts in transit if it sweats.

Grandfather clocks need the pendulum and weights removed and packed separately, with the movement secured. Pianos need a specialist if they are upright or grand, and we arrange that on your behalf rather than attempt it ourselves.

Sentimental items get the gentlest treatment of all. Wedding albums and family photographs go into archive boxes with acid-free tissue between each page. Christening gowns and shawls go into garment boxes, never folded into a regular carton. Urns travel with the family in the car.

If a piece is genuinely irreplaceable and you would rather not see it loaded onto a lorry at all, take it yourself. There is no shame in that, and no removals firm worth its salt will be offended.

Common Mistakes That Lead to Damage

Five mistakes account for almost every fragile item that arrives broken.

• Boxes that are too big. A book box stuffed with crockery is too heavy to handle safely and will burst at the bottom. Use the right box for the right contents.
• Boxes that are too empty. Air space lets contents move and break. Fill every void with crumpled paper.
• Stacking heavy on light. The crew loads by weight, but only if your boxes are labelled honestly. A box marked “kitchen” that weighs thirty kilos ends up on top of a lighter box and crushes what is inside.
• Skipping the inventory. If a piece is not on the survey sheet, the crew does not know it needs a bespoke wrap.
• Last-minute panic packing. The wine glasses you wrap at half past ten the night before are the ones that break. Start a fortnight out and you will not need to.

Our guide on common moving house mistakes covers the wider set of slip-ups that catch movers out.

When to Use Professional Packing Services

Most families do not need a full pack. They need a partial pack that takes the high-risk items off their plate.

Our packing service runs from a breakables-only option, where our team packs the kitchen and the artwork and you handle the books and bedding, up to a full pack and unpack with material disposal afterwards. The breakables-only option is the one we recommend most often. It costs less than people expect, takes a single day, and removes the part of the move that causes the most damage.

A full pack is worth it in three situations: you are short on time, you are moving from a large home with a lot of glass, art and antiques, or you are moving through a bereavement or a relationship breakdown, where the emotional load is already too high to add packing on top.

If you need somewhere to keep the fragile items between completion days, our storage at the Houghton Regis depot offers individually alarmed units priced by cubic feet, with 24-hour access seven days a week and long or short-term rental.

If you would like our team to walk through your home, list the fragile and sentimental items, and put together a plan with the right level of packing for your move, request a tailored quote or get in touch with the team. We will come back with a clear price and a written plan, not an off-the-shelf rate.

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