Artwork is the one thing in a move where the packing matters more than the vehicle. What follows covers how pieces are wrapped, crated, carried and rehung, and where the line falls between a job an owner can handle and one that needs specialists.
Measure the Route Out, Not Only the Artwork
Wrapping should begin after the exit route has been walked. Measure every doorway, the turn on the half landing, the depth of the lift car, and the width of the front gate. Large canvases in London flats come unstuck at the same spot again and again, which is the return on a Victorian staircase where a stretcher meets a wall that has no intention of moving.
Measuring the piece means measuring the frame at its widest point and then adding the packing on top. A generous crate wall plus foam turns a snug doorway into an impossible one.
Outside the building counts as well. Loading bays in central boroughs need to be booked in advance, and suspending a residential parking bay requires days’ notice with the council (longer if the street already has works on it, and the council will not be hurried anyway).
Crates, Travel Frames and Soft Packing
A crate isn’t required for every piece. Short local moves in a padded van will take soft packing: glassine, foam, a stiff card outer, corner protection, then strapped upright against a bulkhead rack. Paintings ride on the edge. Lying them flat and stacking anything on top puts pressure straight through the canvas.
Anything flying, going into a store for a season, or carrying a value that dwarfs the vehicle earns a proper case. Heavy ply, foam-lined, orientation arrows on the outside and nothing printed there that reveals what’s inside. That last detail matters more than owners tend to assume.
Bringing in Specialists
Insurers often make this decision on the owner’s behalf. Fine art policies set a value above which the work has to be handled by a specialist, and standard household removals cover excludes items of unusual value as a matter of course. The carrier’s liability, calculated by weight, is nearly zero when the item is a painting.
Specialist art movers in London run climate-controlled vans on air suspension, carry the permits required by restricted streets and emission zones, and crew jobs with handlers who have handled this sort of thing before. They also take on the parts nobody enjoys, like export licensing for older works leaving the country or the documentation required for anything with ivory or tortoiseshell inlay.
Condition Reports Save Money
Photographs come before wrapping. Daylight, front and back, every edge of the frame, close-ups of existing craquelure, chips, old restoration and the labels glued to the stretcher bar. A written note of what’s already there, signed by whoever is handing over and whoever is collecting, does the rest.
Claims turn on whether damage predates the move. A time-stamped set of images settles that question quickly; without one, the conversation with the insurer becomes memory against memory, and nobody wins.
Heat, Damp and the Wait Before Unwrapping
Timber and canvas respond to humidity more quickly than most owners expect. A panel painting taken from a heated flat into a cold van in February, then carried into a warm house at the other end, has expanded and then contracted again inside the space of an afternoon. Cracking in the paint layer follows, sometimes months later, which makes it easy to blame something else.
And when a crate arrives, it stays shut. Overnight at minimum, longer in winter, so the contents come up to room temperature slowly. Opening a cold case in a warm room causes condensation to form on the surface, where mould begins. Nothing valuable stays in a parked van overnight, whether or not it has an alarm system.
Getting It Back on the Wall
Unwrapping happens after acclimatisation, and the wall gets checked before the fixings do. Plasterboard needs proper anchors rather than optimism. Chimney breasts above working fireplaces cook a painting slowly, and radiators underneath do the same job from below.
Hanging hardware gets a look at the same time. Cord perishes, D-rings work loose, and screws in old frames loosen in tired holes. Replacing all of it costs almost nothing next to the value of what’s hanging from it.
