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Furniture is where most of the cubic metres go, so it is where most of the money goes. The question on every item is the same: does shipping it cost less than replacing it in Thailand, and will it survive the climate once it gets there.
Storage at either end is priced separately, and it comes up often on a furniture relocation because sale and tenancy dates rarely line up with a sailing. For a lot of British furniture the honest answer is no. Flat pack does not travel, chipboard swells in humidity, and Thai teak furniture is both good and cheap. For solid wood, antiques and anything you genuinely care about, shipping wins easily.
Volumes below are typical once wrapped for sea freight. Freight cost assumes shared container space at £40 to £80 per cubic metre, before surcharges and delivery.
| Item | Roughly | Freight | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three seat sofa | 2.0 to 2.5 cbm | £80 to £200 | Ship if it is good quality |
| King bed and mattress | 1.5 to 2.0 cbm | £60 to £160 | Ship the frame, consider selling the mattress |
| Solid wood wardrobe | 1.5 to 2.5 cbm | £60 to £200 | Ship if solid, sell if flat pack |
| Dining table and six chairs | 1.5 to 2.0 cbm | £60 to £160 | Ship if solid wood |
| Chest of drawers | 0.6 to 1.0 cbm | £25 to £80 | Depends entirely on what it is made of |
| Washing machine | 0.6 cbm | £25 to £50 | Sell. Cheap locally, and a duplicate is dutiable |
| Fridge freezer | 1.0 to 1.4 cbm | £40 to £110 | Sell. Same reason, plus voltage and service |
| Piano, upright | 1.5 to 2.0 cbm | £60 to £160 plus specialist handling | Ship only if it is a good instrument |
The crossing is the easy part. Thailand sits at 70 to 90 percent relative humidity for most of the year, and a lot of modern British furniture was never built for it.
Chipboard and MDF absorb moisture and swell, particularly at unsealed edges and around screw fixings. Flat pack units that have been dismantled and rebuilt once are already weaker, and the humidity finishes the job.
Veneer lifts. The glue behind a thin veneer layer is the failure point, and it goes at the corners first.
Solid wood is fine, and this is where British furniture earns its passage. Oak, walnut, mahogany and genuine antiques all cope. They may move slightly with the seasons, which is normal.
Upholstery needs airflow. Fabric sofas do well in a room with air conditioning or a fan and less well in a closed room in the rainy season. Leather needs occasional conditioning it would not need in the UK.
Thailand has a large domestic furniture industry, teak and rubberwood are locally sourced, and labour costs are low. A solid wood wardrobe made for the climate often costs less than shipping a British one. That is not true of everything, but it is true of most standard pieces.
Not what you paid in the UK. If a sofa cost you GBP 800 five years ago and costs GBP 1,400 to replace in Bangkok, declare GBP 1,400. Marine cover pays what you declared, and the point of it is to put you back where you were.
If you pack a box yourself, most policies will not cover breakage inside it. That matters less for furniture, which the crew wrap regardless, and a great deal for anything fragile going in a carton.
Condition photographs of anything valuable, taken before the blankets go on. A claim without them turns into an argument about whether the mark was already there.
It depends on the piece. Shared container space runs about £40 to £80 per cubic metre, so a three seat sofa is roughly £80 to £200 of freight. If replacing the item in Thailand costs under about £300, sell it in the UK. If it is solid wood, antique or something you care about, ship it.
Solid wood copes fine. Chipboard, MDF and veneer do not: they absorb moisture, swell at unsealed edges and lift at the corners. Thailand runs at 70 to 90 percent relative humidity for most of the year, which is harder on furniture than the sea crossing is.
Generally not. It has usually been dismantled and rebuilt at least once already, which weakens the fixings, and the chipboard core is exactly what humidity attacks. The freight will often cost more than the item is worth.
Yes, and it is worth doing. Beds, dining tables and modular units come apart, and that can cut the volume of a bedroom by around a third. Since price is volume based, dismantling is one of the few things that reduces the bill without reducing what you keep.
Yes, with specialist handling on top of the normal freight. An upright is roughly 1.5 to 2 cubic metres. Whether it is worth it depends on the instrument: a good piano justifies it, a mid range upright usually does not once the humidity and the retuning are factored in.
Sell them. They are cheap in Thailand, servicing a British model locally is difficult, and only one unit of each type of electrical appliance clears customs free. Shipping a washing machine and a fridge that you then pay duty on is the worst of both.
At Thai replacement cost, not UK purchase price. Marine cover typically runs 0.3 to 0.8 percent of the declared value and pays out against what you declared. Photograph anything valuable before it is wrapped, because a claim without condition photographs becomes an argument.
In older buildings and at ground floor level, yes. Ask about treatment for untreated softwood before shipping, and avoid standing wooden furniture directly against a ground floor wall. Solid hardwood and properly finished pieces are far less vulnerable.
Every firm in the network holds FIDI FAIM certification. Ernst and Young audit them against more than two hundred criteria on a three year cycle: financial standing, insurance, customs competence, staff training and how claims get handled. On a route with a sea leg and a clearance in the middle, that audit is what separates a problem being solved from a problem being argued about.
We have run this service since November 2010 and have handled over 850,000 enquiries in that time. We are a Working Member of the AGM Group network, agm.group. We are not a removal company and we do not own a lorry: your details go to one vetted firm and they survey and quote directly.
Send the UK collection postcode, the destination address, a rough furniture list and your date. One vetted moving company converts it to cubic metres and prices it properly.
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Written by Darren Benjamin, founder of International Removals Companies. Darren has run this service since November 2010 and has overseen more than 850,000 moving enquiries.
Freight rates on this page were checked in DATE against three published UK sources and are re-checked every year. Rules and prices change, so confirm your own position before you ship. Questions: 07551 855 064 or WhatsApp. Read our Google reviews.
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