The materials, the method, the why. The single biggest reason for our damage-free record across forty years of Sussex removals.
Pad-wrap is the single most important thing we do. It’s the reason our customers come back, the reason their grandmothers’ dressers arrive on the other end of an international move without a single scratch, and the reason we still get telephone enquiries from neighbours who watched us pad-wrap a friend’s furniture three doors down. This guide explains exactly what the service is, what it costs, and why it works.
The principle is simple: every freestanding piece of furniture is individually wrapped in heavy quilted blankets in your home, then only unwrapped once it’s in its final position at the new property. The wrapped piece never touches another wrapped piece without padding between them. The detail below explains each part of the method.
Pad-wrap is the use of industry-weight quilted moving blankets to individually wrap freestanding furniture so it’s protected from chips, scratches, dents and pressure marks during a move. The blankets are heavy — much heavier than household throws — and stitched with closed seams so the filling doesn’t shift. They’re tied in place using webbing straps rather than tape, so nothing adhesive touches the furniture finish.
A typical 3-bedroom house contains 40–80 pieces of pad-wrappable furniture: beds, wardrobes, chests of drawers, sideboards, dining tables, coffee tables, sofas, armchairs, dressers, bookcases, desk units. Each is wrapped individually, before it’s loaded, in your home. The wrapping doesn’t come off until the piece is in its final room and position at the new property.
This is the version every BAR-registered remover should be doing. In practice the industry varies — some firms use thin throws or hardware-store blankets, some wrap in the lorry rather than the room, some don’t pad-wrap at all and rely on shrink-wrap or bubble wrap (which provides no real cushioning). The differences are real and measurable in damage rates. See our full pad-wrap protection explained guide for the wider context.
Step 1 — Wrap in your home. Every piece of furniture is pad-wrapped where it stands. Drawer fronts are taped (with non-residue tape so finishes aren’t damaged), corners protected with corner-board where needed, fragile detail covered, hardware (handles, latches) padded. The blanket goes on, the webbing strap holds it in place, and the piece is ready to move. Average time per piece: 3–5 minutes.
Step 2 — Load stack-safe. Wrapped pieces go straight to the lorry and are loaded in a sequence that protects them from each other. Heaviest at the bottom, lightest on top. Wrapped corners face wrapped corners — pad-on-pad, never pad-on-glass-or-veneer. Strapped to the bulkhead and the lorry walls so nothing shifts in transit. For longer moves, the lorry is configured with internal mooring points specifically for this. Pieces never get unwrapped in transit.
Step 3 — Unwrap in final position. At the new property, the wrapped piece is carried in (still wrapped, including up stairs and through doorways), placed in the room you’ve chosen, in the exact position you choose. Only then does the wrapping come off. The result: pieces arrive in the new property looking identical to how they left the old property.
Pad-wrap is more expensive for the remover than the alternatives. Industry-weight blankets cost meaningfully more than thin throws or single-use bubble wrap. They need to be laundered between every job — we have an in-house laundry system at our Lower Dicker depot for this. And the wrapping itself takes crew time — 3–5 minutes per piece × 50 pieces = roughly 3 hours added to the load day.
So a budget remover saves money on three fronts by not pad-wrapping: lower materials cost, no laundry overhead, faster load times. The customer sometimes gets a slightly cheaper quote. The downside is what arrives at the other end — chips, scratches, pressure dents — and an awkward conversation about whether the customer’s home contents insurance covers the damage.
For most professionally-run removers, pad-wrap is included on every full removal as standard, not an extra. We’ve included it on every quote since 1982. The questions-to-ask guide covers what to confirm with any remover before booking — pad-wrap is at the top of the list.
Every piece of freestanding furniture larger than a side table gets pad-wrapped. That includes obvious targets — wardrobes, beds, chests of drawers, sideboards, sofas, armchairs, dining tables — and less obvious ones like the bedside table, the small writing desk, the hall console, the children’s nightstands. If it has finished edges, it gets wrapped.
What doesn’t get pad-wrapped: packed cartons (those have their own protection internally — see our fragile-packing guide), small items like lamps and small decorative objects (these are packed in cartons), mattresses (these get specific plastic mattress covers, not pad-wrap), and white goods (these have their own packaging or shipping protectors).
Special-care items — antiques, art, marble or stone, glass-fronted display cabinets, pianos — get pad-wrap plus additional protection. For these we’d typically also use corner-board for the building (so the piece doesn’t mark doorways or walls in transit) and custom crating where the piece is genuinely irreplaceable. The antiques-moving guide covers this in more detail and the white-glove service is the relevant tier for very high-value contents.
Internal records aren’t scientific surveys but they’re telling. Across the moves we’ve done since 1982, the damage rate on pad-wrapped contents is roughly an order of magnitude lower than the damage rate on contents we’ve seen at the unload end from non-pad-wrapped removers (where we’ve been the second-mover on a customer reclaiming from a budget operator’s storage).
The categories where the difference shows: chips on furniture corners (almost zero on pad-wrapped jobs vs commonplace on shrink-wrapped jobs), pressure dents on upholstery (rare on pad-wrap, occasional on cling-film), scratches on veneer and lacquered finishes (extremely rare on pad-wrap, fairly common otherwise). Glass cracks and breakages depend more on the loading sequence than the wrap, but pad-wrap helps because the wrapped glass piece is protected from neighbours during transit.
The insurance picture follows the same pattern. Standard goods-in-transit insurance covers transit damage on professionally-wrapped pieces. Claims rates are correspondingly lower across professionally-wrapped moves. The differential isn’t marketing; it’s measurable in the data.
The customer’s role in a pad-wrapped move is mostly to stay out of the way. The crew works faster when they have clear access to each room and a chair to put the wrapping on while it’s being applied. Move smaller items (lamps, decorative objects) out of the room before the crew arrives so the path to the furniture is unobstructed.
What we always include on every full removal at no extra cost: pad-wrap protection (as described above), removal-grade cartons sized correctly, a written and itemised quote, and BAR-protected deposit handling under the Advance Payment Guarantee. None of this is an add-on or premium tier. It’s the standard service.
What costs extra: packing (full pack £450–£800 on a 3-bed, fragile-only £220–£340), specialist handling (piano, antiques, marble), storage between completion dates, international/overseas customs handling. All quoted as separate line items so you see what each costs. Book the free survey to get the itemised quote.
We've been a family-run Sussex remover since 1982 — the same name on the lorry as the name on the paperwork. Mark personally surveys the high-value and overseas moves; our crews are directly employed (not casual day labour) and trained at our own staff training centre, one of only a handful of UK removers with that facility on site.
Standard inclusions on every full removal: pad-wrap protection for every freestanding piece of furniture, removal-grade cartons, a written and itemised fixed-price quote with no surprises on the day, and the British Association of Removers' Advance Payment Guarantee protecting every deposit. The result, over forty years and tens of thousands of moves, is a 4.9/5 review average across 120+ independent Google reviews.
Booking the survey takes ten minutes. Whether it's a one-bedroom flat across Eastbourne or a country house to overseas, the process is the same: in-home or video survey, written quote within 48 hours, deposit-protected booking, and a calm move day.
Free in-home or video survey, written fixed-price quote, BAR-protected deposit. Sussex’s family-run remover since 1982.
No. Pad-wrap is included on every full removal we quote — it's standard, not premium. The crew time and the blanket materials are all part of the headline price.
Around 90 minutes for our standard 3-crew team. We start wrapping as soon as we arrive and continue through the morning while another crew member loads the lorry.
You can but we'd strongly recommend our own. Industry-weight blankets are heavier and stitched to take the weight of a fully-loaded lorry. Hardware-store blankets often aren't, and a thin blanket failing in transit defeats the whole point.
Yes. The same method applies for FIDI-network international shipments — every piece pad-wrapped before it goes into the customs-controlled holding bay at our depot, sealed inside the container.
Flag it before the crew leaves so we can photograph it and start the claim under our goods-in-transit insurance. Standard cover handles transit damage on professionally-wrapped contents.