How long a London move takes, and what decides the day

The short version

The shape of a moving day

A removal runs in roughly the same order every time, and that order tells you where your day is likely to slip.

1. The walk round. The crew leader walks the rooms, then the route out: the landing, the staircase or the lift, the communal door, the pavement and the vehicle. Whatever has to be dismantled is identified here. Anything that will not travel at all is said out loud immediately, rather than discovered at the top of the stairs.
2. Protection down. Floors, corners, the handrail and the newel post, at both addresses. In a block the communal parts are protected before a single carton moves. Marks on a shared staircase are deducted from your deposit as readily as marks inside the flat.
3. Loading in delivery order. The vehicle is not filled at random. It is loaded so that whatever comes off first at the far end is whatever the new property needs first, generally the beds. On a congested street the vehicle also becomes the holding area, because nothing can be stacked on a public footway.
4. The drive. Normally the briefest portion of the day, and invariably the portion people overestimate.
5. Unloading to marked rooms. Cartons travel to the room written on them. A carton labelled "kitchen" is carried once, while an unlabelled carton is carried twice by somebody who has to interrupt you first.
6. Reassembly. Beds reassembled, wardrobes rebuilt, the table legs returned. This is genuine work, and it comes last, when the daylight is going.
7. The final check. Both properties walked again, the inventory settled, the protection lifted, and nothing abandoned in a loft or a bin store.

What decides how long a move takes

These are the conditions that genuinely move the day, in roughly the order they bite.

• The floor, and whether a lift exists. A top-floor flat with a working goods lift frequently runs quicker than a second-floor flat without one. The floor number on its own tells you remarkably little.
• Whether the lift can be reserved, and who holds the reservation. In a managed block the lift is booked in advance, and only the resident can book it. A crew waiting in a lobby for a lift somebody else reserved is a crew being paid to stand still. Where the building has issued a window, arriving early purchases nothing. The lift is not yours yet, and the following resident holds the reservation immediately after you.
• How near the vehicle can stand to the door. Everything is carried from the vehicle, so that distance is paid on every item, in both directions, at both addresses. Fifty metres sounds like nothing until it has been walked ninety times.
• The narrowest turn, rather than the number of stairs. A straight flight is slow but predictable. A half-landing where the return is tighter than the sofa is a different job entirely. It determines whether a wardrobe descends whole or in components.
• Steps up from the pavement. A trolley is what makes a level approach efficient, because cartons stack and a single person delivers the stack. A flight of external steps removes that advantage completely. Every carton and every drawer is then carried by hand, individually, over the top tread.
• Whatever has to be dismantled. Bed frames and flat-pack wardrobes nearly always do. A unit assembled in the room descends as components, and a sprung mattress will not bend around a winding loft staircase. Every piece is labour at this address and labour again at the other.
• How much is actually packed when the crew arrives. This is the largest variable in the day, and the only one entirely within your control. A half-packed room has to be packed before anybody can load it.
• The doors, and whatever opens them. A fob releases the lobby, a second releases the service route, and the lift expects the fob again. Somebody carrying a load in both hands cannot operate doors on that pattern, so a building with two entryphones requires an additional pair of hands.
• Whether the day has two addresses or three. Combining two households, or emptying a flat as well as a house, means a hold-up at one address interrupts all of them.

Our guide to moving out of a London flat covers the building half of that list, including what to measure and whom to ask.

Two three-bedroom flats, two entirely different days

Picture two flats containing identical furniture.

The first is a new-build. There is a goods lift, a reservation the managing agent has confirmed, and a marked bay a few paces from the lobby. The crew loads to a sequence, the lift continues moving, and the carry is short at both addresses.

The second is a Victorian conversion four floors up, with no lift at all. The staircase turns twice at every half-landing. The communal door opens onto a busy pavement, and the nearest legal position for the vehicle is around the corner. The beds and the wardrobe are dismantled on the top landing. One of the crew works the staircase, so the neighbours can still reach their own front doors.

Identical contents, identical bedroom count, two entirely different days. That difference is why we will not plan or price a London removal without seeing it. What the survey finds moves the figure as well as the day, and our removals cost guide explains the money side in full.

What you control

Every item below genuinely shortens the day.

• Finish the packing before the crew arrives, unless you have arranged for us to pack. Finished means taped, labelled and lifted off the floor.
• Label by room, on the side of the carton rather than the top, using the room name at the new address.
• Decide what is not travelling before the day. Deciding on the morning itself is what overruns a removal, and the loft, the garage and the shed are where those decisions hide. Our guide to getting rid of furniture in London covers the council and charity routes, which all need arranging well in advance.
• Clear the route — the hallway, the landing, the top of the staircase and the path to the kerb. A bicycle in a communal hall costs a manoeuvre every time somebody passes it.
• Reserve the lift at both addresses before you confirm the date, and establish what happens to that reservation if the date moves.
• Keep the parking clear, and tell us which street the vehicle can occupy at both ends.
• Give us the deadline rather than the starting time. A check-out appointment, a key handover, a reserved lift window. We plan backwards from the deadline, and where the booking cannot reach it, we say so while you can still alter something.

What nobody controls

Three situations sit outside the plan, which is why they are worth discussing beforehand.

A chain completing late. Keys are released when the money arrives, not at an agreed hour, and your belongings are already wrapped on the vehicle. Neither you nor the crew can make a payment travel faster. What you can decide in advance is the arrangement while everybody waits: see completion delayed on moving day.

Traffic. Crossing London is consistently slower than the map suggests. A river crossing or an unexpected closure can cost you the far end of a reserved window.

A building that will not release its lift. The reservation queue is indifferent to the size of your load. A four-bedroom household and a single armchair occupy it on identical terms. Whatever date the block releases becomes the date everything else is arranged behind.

When one day is not enough

Occasionally the honest answer is that the job will not fit into a single day. That is considerably better heard at the survey than in the evening on the day itself.

The usual reasons are a long carry with no lift at either address, or two buildings whose permitted windows do not meet. Sometimes it is a household combining into one property, or a completion that has already slipped. The answers are a part-load, or a holding load that remains with us between the two halves. Sometimes it is a second day, or storage in between. Whichever one applies is written into the quote before you book.

What we will not do is plan one uninterrupted day and hope that both buildings agree to it.

How your day is worked out before it happens

We survey every job before quoting, by video call or in person. The survey is where the staircase, the turn, the carry and the lift window stop being assumptions.

The quote then arrives in writing, naming the crew, the vehicle and the running order, and the number you accept is the number you pay. We are fully insured. Whether the work is house removals, flat removals or a man and van, the day is planned around the access rather than the room count. For the deadlines that arrive before it, our moving house checklist sets them out in order.

Common questions