It's the first question everyone asks, and the easiest one to get wrong. Book a unit too small and you're paying for a second one within weeks. Book too large and you're paying for empty floor space every month. Here's how to actually work it out.
Start With What You're Storing, Not How You Feel About It
It's tempting to guess based on how much "stuff" a move feels like. Instead, think in rooms. A single room of furniture and boxes — a bedroom, a home office — almost always fits our smallest container. A full flat or house needs to be sized room by room, not guessed at in one go.
A Rough Guide by Property Size
A few boxes, a bike, or a single room's contents — our 6ft container (48 sq ft) is usually enough. Think garden furniture, a spare bed, boxed books, or the overflow from a loft clear-out.
A studio or one-bedroom flat — this is what our 10ft container (80 sq ft) is built for. It comfortably holds a bed, sofa, wardrobe, washing machine, dining table and the boxes that go with them — see our 10ft container page for the full breakdown.
A two-to-three-bedroom house — you'll usually want a 20ft container (160 sq ft). This covers furniture from multiple rooms, white goods, and 30 or more boxes with room to still move around inside.
A four-bedroom-plus house, or bulk/commercial stock — our 40ft container (320 sq ft) is built for this scale, including space to keep things organised rather than just stacked.
Don't Forget the Awkward Items
Bulky, irregularly shaped items eat more space than boxes of the same weight. A sofa, a wardrobe, or a bike rack all take up more real floor space than their size suggests once you factor in how awkward they are to stack around. If your move includes several large furniture pieces, it's often worth sizing up one level from what a pure room-count would suggest.
When in Doubt, Ask
Sizing a unit from a text description is never as accurate as a two-minute conversation. Tell our team roughly what you're storing — even just "a two-bed flat, no big furniture" — and we'll recommend a size before you book, not after you've unpacked a van outside a unit that's too small.
You can also try our storage size calculator for an instant recommendation, or head straight to our Storage Units page to compare all five sizes side by side.
