Anything can happen during a chaotic house move – one moment everything may be going fine and then, BOOM! – property damage appears out of the blue – suddenly and without any warning too.
How did THAT happen?
Remember that floor damage – scratches, scrapes, dents, broken tiles, etc. – is the most frequent type of damage when you’re moving out of your old home or moving into a new house or apartment. Doors and door frames are also at risk of being scratched, nicked, dented, or scuffed when you’re trying to get large items through them.
But while you’re focusing all your attention on protecting the floors and doors of the place you’re leaving or the one you’re moving into, the walls there are just as susceptible to damage and can also get a bad hit before you even realize it.
And now that you know how to keep floors and doors safe during a move, it’s time you learn how to protect walls when moving furniture.
Here are the top 10 ways to protect your walls during a move.
1. Plan ahead
Possibly the worst thing you can do when moving furniture is to rush the job. If you fail to plan your steps in advance, then not only is property damage likely but, as an added bonus, you may get injured in the process too.
One of the best indirect ways to protect walls when you move is to think before you act. They say that haste makes waste and that’s especially true when you’re taking moving large furniture items and big household appliances out of the house.
Remember: before you start moving your furniture, you just have to have a good plan of action – one that you think will work out okay in the end.
2. Clear the exit paths
Take a walk along the intended exit pathways and make sure there are no obstacles of any kind – boxes, smaller furniture pieces like chairs, or anything else. The paths leading out of your home must be perfectly clear of clutter and free of any dangerous areas (wet spots, for example) that can cause movers to lose their balance and hit the nearby walls with the load they are carrying.
Must-read: How to prevent accidents and injuries when moving house
3. Have enough manpower
Depending on the weight and dimensions of the furniture pieces, you’re going to need at least 2 persons to carry a large item out of the house without any property damage whatsoever. For bigger pieces, 4 people are required to handle the heavy task safely.
Interestingly enough, damage to walls when moving is often the result of underestimating the number of people needed to lift and carry a furniture piece from its resting position all the way to the moving vehicle.
Read also: How to get friends to help you move
4. Dress properly
Property damage can be easily avoided when you’re dressed appropriately for the occasion – you and all the people who will be involved in the moving process. Make sure you wear comfortable shoes that are enclosed and provide good traction (anti-slip soles).
To protect the walls, take off any large rings you may be wearing on your fingers – especially the ones with large stones that can get accidentally scraped against a wall and leave a nasty mark on it. Needless to say, you wouldn’t want to end up with a damaged ring either.
See also: What to wear on Moving day
5. Disassemble large furniture
Often, walls get damaged when a furniture piece is too tall (a dresser) or too long (a couch) to be navigated safely around a corner. In such cases, the furniture piece may end up getting wedged tightly against the corner and the wall, and any forced attempts to get it free can easily lead to bad results for those wall corners.
One of the best ways to protect walls when moving is to disassemble the largest furniture units before moving them out of their places. Whenever possible, remove any protruding parts – legs, arms, decorations, etc. – from your beds, dressers, couches, sofas, tables, desks, and so on.
The more compact a furniture piece becomes, the lesser the chances of wall damage will be.
Good to know: Will movers disassemble furniture?
6. Wrap furniture pieces with blankets or bubble wrap
If a large furniture piece cannot be safely disassembled, then you have to wrap its protruding parts – most often its legs – in bubble wrap. That way, even if there’s an unwanted contact between the parts of the furniture that stick out and a wall, the soft air-filled bubbles of the plastic wrap should absorb the shock and keep both the wall and the furniture item as safe as they can be.
Additionally, make sure you cover the entire length of all furniture pieces with thick protective blankets (furniture blankets) to keep walls from getting scratched, dented, or scuffed on Moving day. Use tape to secure those blankets but be careful not to let the packing tape get into contact directly with the delicate surface of your furniture.
See also: How to pack furniture for moving
7. Use a moving dolly to move large items
Note that the walls of narrow rooms and hallways are especially prone to damage on the day of the move and having more people on the job will only make things worse simply because there won’t be enough room for those helpers to move together with the furniture item.
In such cases, property damage will be best avoided when you use a moving dolly – either a furniture dolly or an appliance dolly depending on the specific item you want to move. Once you secure the load onto the moving dolly, no more than 2 people will be needed to navigate the large and heavy item with zero damage to the walls, doors, and floors.
Useful info: How to use a moving dolly
8. Cover the walls with drop cloths, blankets or cardboard
Ultimately, the best direct way to protect your walls during a move is to cover them with drop cloths or blankets. That way, the soft protective materials will absorb any accidental hits and will keep both the walls and your furniture items 100% safe. Pay special attention to sharp wall corners – they will need extra padding to prevent bad marks on the walls when you’re moving extra-large items by them.
Another good way to protect walls when moving is to cover the most vulnerable wall areas with sheets of thick cardboard. During a house move, cardboard boxes will be everywhere, so it won’t be hard to find all the cardboard you’ll need to shield the busiest sections of the walls.
Use generous helpings of painter’s tape to secure the drop cloths, blankets or cardboard sheets onto the walls.
Good to know: How to prevent property damage when moving out
9. Use wall corner guards
If you’re really serious about protecting the walls of the place you’re moving out of or moving into (remember, property damage can be way too costly!), then you can install wall corner guards to eliminate the likelihood of damage to the most vulnerable areas of a wall – the corners.
Corner guards do offer the ultimate protection for the corners of your walls but they definitely do not come for free. You can purchase a set of plastic corner guards from a nearby home improvement store or order those corner protectors online (from Amazon, for example).
10. Hire furniture movers
Ultimately, the best way to protect your walls during a move is to leave the job of lifting and carrying your heavy furniture to experienced furniture movers. Professional movers have been trained extensively to avoid property damage of any kind – including wall damage. What’s more, their day-to-day work experience proves to be invaluable in all possible house moving scenarios.
Request a free cost estimate from the best furniture movers in your area to see how much they will charge you for the job.
