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Elevation · London

The floor you are on
decides the move

Everybody quotes volume. Volume is almost never what decides a London removal. The storey is — because the storey brings the staircase, the lift, the carry and the landing with it, and those four things between them settle whether your sofa leaves through the door or over the bannister.

So this firm is arranged by floor, and everything we ask you is a measurement you can take with a tape.

Get a price All six storeys
Section through a London building
LVL 03+ Top floor and lofts The last flight is the narrowest in the building. LVL 03+ Upper floors, with a lift A lift is three measurements and a booking. LVL 01–02 First and second, on foot The staircase turn is the whole job. LVL 00 Ground floor Level with the street. Not the same as easy. LVL −01 Basement and lower ground The only floor where the load goes up on the way out. ALL LVLS A whole house, worked top down

Six storeys

What changes when the floor changes

Each of these is a genuinely different job with a genuinely different failure mode. A basement and a ground-floor flat sit a metre apart and have nothing in common; a top-floor conversion in a block with a lift is a stair job with extra steps.

Street level and below

Level, or going up on the way out. Two opposite problems that look similar on a form.

LVL −01 The only floor where everything goes up on the way out Basement and lower ground The one storey in London where the load leaves upward. Area steps, a railing gate that is narrower than the steps it guards, and a light well that decides whether anything long can turn at the bottom. Nothing about it resembles a ground-floor job. LVL 00 Level with the street, which is not the same as easy Ground floor The quickest storey there is, provided the front path, the gate and the threshold behave. Where they do not — a raised step, a gate post, a tiled path with no room to turn — a ground-floor flat can be slower than a second-floor one with a straight stair.

Above, on foot

Where the staircase is the job. We measure the turn before anything else.

LVL 01–02 The London default, and the staircase is the whole job First and second floor, no lift More of this city lives one or two floors up a shared staircase than anywhere else, and the staircase is what we measure. The clear diagonal at the tightest turn decides which of your furniture can physically come down it, and it is almost never what people expect. LVL 03+ Where the lift stops one floor short Top floor and loft conversions Converted top floors are the storey most often misdescribed, because the building has a lift and the flat is not on it. The last flight is usually the narrowest and steepest in the building, and it was built after everything else was finished.

Above, by lift

A lift is three measurements and a booking, not a solution.

LVL 03+ A lift is a dimension, not an answer Upper floors with a lift A lift solves the height and introduces three new measurements: the door width, the car depth, and whether it is shared. A wardrobe that will not stand up in a lift car has to go up the stairs regardless of how many floors there are.

Every floor

A house, worked top down so the staircase below stays clear.

ALL LVLS Loft, bedrooms, ground, cellar — in that order, downward A whole house, floor by floor A house is not a large flat. It is four or five storeys of separate problems stacked on one staircase, and the order matters: the loft comes out first because the staircase below it has to stay clear, and the cellar comes out last because it is the only load going up.

Survey notes

The staircase census

Six staircases account for most of the housing stock in this city, and each of them fails in its own particular way. For every one there is a single figure that decides the job — not the width of the flight, which is what people measure, but the dimension at the point where the flight stops being straight.

01

The Victorian half-landing dogleg

Converted terraces almost everywhere inside the North and South Circular.

Measure this

The clear diagonal across the half-landing, corner to corner, with the handrail in place — not the width of the flight.

This single figure decides whether a three-seat sofa leaves the building through the door or over the bannister. Measure it before you buy furniture, not before you move it.

02

The Georgian straight flight with a tight newel

Four-storey terraces in Islington, Bloomsbury, Spitalfields and Kennington.

Measure this

The gap between the newel post and the opposite wall at the very bottom of the flight.

The flight itself is generous and the last metre of it is not. Long rigid items — bed frames, tabletops, ladders — get all the way down and stop at the bottom step.

03

The winder at the foot of the stairs

Interwar and post-war suburban houses across the outer boroughs.

Measure this

The narrowest tread depth on the turn, and the ceiling height above it.

A winder turns a straight carry into a pivot at the exact moment the item is at its heaviest. Wardrobes that came in flat-packed do not come out assembled.

04

The communal stone stair in a mansion block

Interwar blocks in Maida Vale, Fulham, Streatham, Finchley, Putney.

Measure this

The handrail-to-handrail width at the turn, and whether the stairwell is open or closed.

Generous, forgiving, and usually the reason nothing large needs the small original lift. An open stairwell also gives a genuine route for lifting over the rail where that is the only option.

05

The inserted top-floor flight

Loft conversions and top-floor flats in converted houses, city-wide.

Measure this

The headroom at the top step and the pitch of the flight, along with the door width at the head of it.

Built last, built steepest, and frequently built after the furniture was already up there. The mattress is usually the item that reveals the problem.

06

The new-build helical or spine stair

Apartment blocks and duplexes built in the last two decades.

Measure this

The inner radius, and the clear width at the narrowest tread.

Tight, consistent and unforgiving of anything rigid. These stairs are designed as an escape route rather than a furniture route, and the lift is genuinely the only way up.

If you send us one number before anything else, send the first one. The clear diagonal across a Victorian half-landing decides more London moves than volume, distance, day of the week and crew size put together, and almost nobody has it.

Six ways it does not help

Where the lift stops

"There is a lift" is the single most frequent thing written on a quote form and one of the least reliable. A lift is a set of dimensions and a set of conditions, and here are the six ways it turns out not to be the answer — every one of them ordinary, none of them anybody's fault.

01

It starts at the ground, and your flat is below it

Lower-ground and basement flats in blocks with a lift are frequently the one dwelling the lift does not serve, because the lift was put in for the floors above.

What to doMeasure the area steps and the gate. That is the real route and it is the one to describe on a quote form.

02

It stops one floor short of the top

The commonest misdescription in London. The building has a lift; the converted top floor is up a separate later flight, and that flight is the narrowest in the building.

What to doTell us the last flight exists before the day. It changes the crew, the route and what can physically go up.

03

The door is narrower than the car

Old passenger lifts frequently have a deep car behind a narrow door and a concertina gate. Nothing rigid that will not pass the door can use the space behind it.

What to doMeasure the door opening, not the car. Then measure the diagonal of the car, because that is what a mattress uses.

04

It opens onto a half-landing

Some retrofitted lifts stop between floors, so every journey still ends with a half-flight of stairs at one end or the other.

What to doAssume the stairs are part of the job and measure them. A lift that saves four flights out of five is still a stair job.

05

The goods lift reaches the basement but not the bay

In new-build blocks the loading bay, the service lift and the car park are sometimes on three different levels connected by ramps rather than by the lift.

What to doAsk building management for the route from bay to lift, in writing. It is a normal question and they will have an answer.

06

It is out of service on the day

It happens, it is nobody's fault, and a plan that depends entirely on one lift has no second half.

What to doKnow the stair route before you need it. On any job above the second floor we work out both routes when we survey.

None of this is an argument against lifts. It is an argument for measuring one before assuming it, which takes a couple of minutes and saves a great deal.

The far end

Nobody asks what floor the new place is on

On a move across London we ask about both ends as a matter of course. On a move across Europe the question quietly disappears, and a shipment arrives at an apartment block in Tirana or Sarajevo with a lift that predates the furniture and a stairwell built for people rather than wardrobes.

These four are our road destinations. Every page on them asks the same question about the far end that we would ask about a flat in Hackney.

How a road move runs

Asked most often

Questions about floors

Why organise a removals firm by floor?
Because the floor brings everything else with it. The staircase, the lift, the carry from the vehicle, the landing at the top — a second-floor walk-up and a second floor with a service lift are two entirely different days, and the inventory is identical.
What is the one measurement you want?
The clear diagonal across the tightest turn on your staircase, corner to corner, with the handrail in place. Not the width of the flight. That single figure decides whether a three-seat sofa leaves through the door or over the bannister.
My block has a lift. Does that settle it?
Not on its own. A lift is a door width, a car depth, a car diagonal and a set of conditions. It may also stop one floor short of a converted top flat, or start at the ground when the flat is below it.
Is a basement easier than a first-floor flat?
Usually harder. It is the only storey in London where the entire load travels upward on the way out, and the area steps and the railing gate at the top of them are frequently narrower than anything inside the flat.
Do you charge more for higher floors?
We price the route, not the altitude. A fourth floor with a goods lift and a loading bay can be quicker than a ground-floor flat at the end of a long tiled path with a gate post in the middle of it.
What if something will not fit down the stairs?
Then it goes over the bannister where the stairwell allows, comes apart where it can, or it does not leave. We would far rather tell you which of those three it is before the day than discover it on a landing.

More on the questions page — measuring before you book, stairs and lifts and landings, particular storeys, moving by road to Europe, and how quotes work here.

Send us one measurement

The clear diagonal across the tightest turn on your staircase, corner to corner, with the handrail in place. That single figure answers more questions about a London move than a room-by-room inventory does.

Get a price Ask about a staircase