Moving furniture is a big job, but there are ways to make it easier on yourself and your helpers. Here, expert movers show you how.
20 Tips for Moving Furniture
Updated on Jan. 07, 2025
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Plan Your Route
Before you lift anything, plan your route, advises Nick Valentino of Bellhop, a company that operates in 27 states. “Especially when moving large furniture items, it’s essential to figure out the route from its starting point before you start,” Valentino sats. “This will give you the chance to clear any obstacles, measure any tight doorways or corners, and get people out of the way.”
Your measurements may reveal that it’s easier to go through a back door — or even a window — than it is to try to muscle a large, heavy item through an undersized front door, especially one that opens onto a stairway. Thinking out of the box can save your back for another day.
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Plan Where It Lands
If you’re moving to a new house or apartment, decide beforehand which furniture will go where. Before you move, sketch a floor plan with the correct measurements of each room, measure your furniture and create your layout. Then, as you move things in, you (or your helpers, if you’re not there) can place your furniture in the correct spot and not have to touch it again.
To make it easy on the movers, tape a copy of the plan to the wall of each room so people can tell at a glance where things go.
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Carry Tall Items High and Low
Forget about handling a tall dresser, filing cabinet or shelving unit by yourself. It’s a two-person job.
Tip the item backward at an angle and have one person carry the top while the other carries the bottom. This centers the weight and keeps the item from swinging out of control. Transporting the item up or down stairs is easier too, since the carrying angle will roughly match the slope of the stairs.
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‘Hook’ Chairs Around Corners
Rachel Long from The Moving Site calls this technique the “Hook Around.” When moving a large easy chair, turn the chair on its side, so it looks like an “L” and move it back-first through the doorway. Then curl it (hook it) around the door frame and slip it through. “This works with large tables that cannot be taken apart as well!” says Long.
If you’re moving into an earthquake zone, it’s a good idea to use furniture anchors after placement of the moved furniture to make sure it stays put.
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Stand Couches on End
When you have to maneuver a couch down a hallway and through a door, you may find it almost impossible to carry it horizontally and turn it into the room. Here’s what to do: Stand the couch on its end before you enter the hallway and slide it to the doorway. You’ll almost always be able to use the Hook Around method to get it through the door. If it’s a bit taller than the door opening, tilt the top away from the door. That should gain you several inches of clearance.
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Use Furniture Carrying Straps
Moving and lifting straps (aka shoulder dollies) take the weight off your back by relying on leverage and large muscle groups. They also leave your hands free to maneuver awkward items. Look for lifting straps that can be adjusted for different-length objects as well as for different-size movers.
Shoulder dollies can be tricky to use on stairs because the weight shifts completely to the downhill mover, but they’ll definitely help you conserve energy on straightaways.
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Don’t Carry or Drag—Slide
You can buy furniture slides in many shapes and sizes at home centers or online. It’s also easy to make your own sliders from plastic container covers, Frisbees, bedspreads, moving blankets, towels and carpet remnants. Use hard plastic sliders for carpeting and soft, padded sliders for hard flooring.
“It’s important to plan for transitions,” advises Valentino. “Combining sliders with moving straps will make it much easier to switch sliders when you transition to a different type of flooring, or to get things out the door and into the truck.”
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Protect Furniture With Blankets and Plastic
Moving blankets are invaluable for protecting the items you’re moving and the walls. They are cheap to rent, but for just a few dollars more, you can buy several at a home center or your local U-Haul rental outlet. (You’ll find many other uses for them.)
To prevent damaging the finish and fragile edges of dressers, tables and other furniture, wrap the items completely with moving blankets and secure the blanket with stretch film. A 20-in. x 1,500-ft. roll of stretch film costs about $20 at home centers and moving outfitters.
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Make a Mattress Sling
Mattresses are floppy, heavy and difficult to carry. Many have handles, but their actual purpose is to help you position the mattress, so they’re not very strong. “Flimsy or foam mattresses can be rolled or folded (taco-ed) and taped or stretch-wrapped in place to make carrying quite easy,” says Long. But you need a different solution for full-size, heavy mattresses, and here it is:
Make a simple rope sling that will give you and your helper a lot more control. Thread the rope through the mattress handles, slip a five-inch piece of one-inch PVC pipe over the rope ends and then loop and tie each end to create a comfortable sling grip. Flip the mattress over so the sling is on the bottom, and you’re on your way.
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Cut and Fold a Box Spring
Is your box spring too big to fit in your stairway or around a tight corner? Use this simple technique to fold it without wrecking it:
- Remove the fabric covering (the most tedious part of this whole process is removing the staples) and place the box spring face down.
- Pull back the mattress cover along each side and cut through the frame just to the left or right of the middle crosspiece (don’t cut through the crosspiece itself). Do this on both sides and in the center.
- You can now fold the box spring like a book as shown and move it. Secure it with a strap to prevent it from springing open.
- Put it back together by screwing a 1×2 along the center crosspiece cuts and against the inside of the outer frame to reinforce them.
- Staple the fabric covering back in place.
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Take Apart What You Can
When you’re lugging a sofa through a doorway, remember: You can always make it a few inches smaller by removing the feet. The same principle applies to any piece of furniture you need to make sleeker or lighter: Take off any and all knobs, drawers, shelves, racks and legs.
“Taking furniture apart is a good idea,” says professional mover Elliot Helm, “but a step people often forget is labeling the hardware or snapping a quick photo before disassembly. It’s a small thing that can save a lot of frustration when it’s time to reassemble everything.”
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Take the Back Off a Recliner
A recliner can be of the most problematic pieces of furniture to move, but not if you disassemble it first. Here’s how:
- Find the back brackets on the outside or inside of the back frame.
- Lift the locking levers on both sides (you may need to use long-nose pliers) and slide the back straight up to remove it from the recliner.
- Tie the footrest in place, so it doesn’t spring open.
Always lift a recliner from the sides, not by the back or footrest.
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Remove Doors
Sometimes, an extra half inch is all it takes to get through a doorway, and you can get that and more by taking the door off its hinges. If you think this is a big job, relax. Here’s all you need to do:
- Close the door so it will be supported inside the jamb when you remove the hinges.
- Remove each hinge pin by poking a 16d nail into the bottom of the hinge and tapping the nail with a hammer to dislodge the pin. You can also wedge a flat-head screwdriver under the head of each pin and tap on the screwdriver to dislodge the pin.
- Grab the door on both sides and pull gently. It should fall into your hands. Set it aside.
- Replace the door by setting it back on the hinges and tapping in the hinge pins with a hammer. I’m used to doing this by myself, but heavy doors are lot easier to hang if you have a helper.
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Remove Door Stop Molding
If removing the door doesn’t open up enough space, pry off the door stop molding using a small pry bar. That will give you another three-quarters of an inch.
If you’re worried about replacing the door stop trim after the move, don’t be. The section of the jamb from which you removed it will probably be unpainted. Just position the trim on the unpainted area and nail it back into place. If you’re careful when removing the trim, you should even be able to reuse the nails.
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Get a Dolly
“One essential tool for any move is a dolly or hand truck,” says Valentino. “These are great for stacks of boxes and items like filing cabinets, dressers, and appliances.”
Long adds: “We love appliance dollies. They are bulkier and taller than a standard dolly to accommodate larger pieces. They also come equipped with guard rails and moving straps to keep the piece secured.” If you don’t have an appliance dolly, there’s no need to buy one. You can rent one from any tool renal outlet or from your local U-Haul.
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Use a Furniture Lifter for Heavy Pieces
A furniture lifter is like a jack for furniture. It has a flat blade that you can slide under the piece you’re lifting and a long handle that operates a hydraulic pump to lift it.
Long is definitely in favor of these back-saving tools. “Furniture lifters are a fairly new product for moving. They help make deadlifting furniture to place sliders or moving dollies underneath way easier.”
If you have to move something really heavy, use the lifter to elevate one end, then slide a length of heavy-duty pipe underneath it. Do the same at the other end, then insert a pipe in the middle. Now you can roll the piece along the floor, transferring the pipe that emerges from the rear to the front as you go.
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Protect Furniture with Corner Guards and Foam
When you’re lugging large or heavy pieces of furniture, it’s almost impossible to avoid bumping into things. “When it comes to protecting walls and door frames, adding corner guards or foam padding could make a big difference,” says Helm. They are a great alternative to blankets, which can be bulky and add weight.
Fit corner guards onto the corners of square or rectangular items and tape foam onto the edges. Foam pipe insulation is perfect for this — you can even use it on round table tops. If you don’t have to worry about damaging the furniture you’re moving — or the walls — you’ll find carrying it much easier.
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Use Ramps
For anyone who knows how to move furniture, ramps are essential equipment, whether you rent them or build your own out of plywood and 2x4s. Set one up on the porch stairway, and you can wheel heavy items down the stairs instead of having to carry it. When you rent a moving truck, a ramp usually comes with it, but when you’re using your own pick-up, you’ll save a lot of heavy lifting with a ramp that extends from the tailgate to the ground.
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Transport Mirrors and Plate Glass with Suction Cups
Pros use suction cups to carry glass, and so should you. They provide a handle, so you can avoid holding the glass from the bottom edge, which can potentially cause injury if you bump into something and the glass breaks. Plus, I just find it a whole lot easier on my back to use a handle set at a convenient location than it is to bend down, slip my hand under a heavy piece of glass, then hoist it to carrying height.
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Zip Tie Plastic Moving Bins
Once you’ve got the heavy furniture handled, there’s still the small items like electrical cords, small appliances and, of course, your personal belongings. If you use plastic bins to move these, you’ll probably encounter the pesky problem of having the lids pop open mid-move.
Prevent this with inexpensive zip ties. Just drill holes in the handles, slip a zip tie through the holes in each handle and pull it tight. When you get to your destination, and you’re ready to unpack, just cut the ties with a utility knife.
About the Experts
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- Nick Valentino is the Vice President of Marketing Operations at Bellhop.
- Rachel Long has been in the moving business for seven years. She is the founder of The Moving Site, a dynamic moving-related website.
- Elliot Helm is the owner of Sterling Interstate, a locally-owned small moving company based in Phoenix, Arizona.
