What Do Packing Services Include and What Do They Cost?

A professional packing service covers the materials and the labour: trained packers arrive with boxes, tape, butcher’s paper and bubble wrap, and pack your home room by room into labelled, inventoried cartons ready for the truck. A full pack of a typical home costs $500 to $1,500 depending on size and contents, usually charged per packer per hour at $50 to $70 with materials on top, and takes a team a day or less for most houses. The lighter option, a fragile-only pack covering the kitchen, glassware, artwork and electronics, captures most of the protection for a few hundred dollars.

Packing is the part of moving everyone underestimates, in both hours and skill. Here is what handing it over actually buys, and when it is worth it.

What a full packing service includes

• Materials, all of them. Book cartons, standard cartons, port-a-robes for hanging clothes, dish packs for the kitchen, paper and wrap. Buying this pile yourself typically runs $150 to $400, which is worth remembering when comparing quotes.
• Room-by-room method. Kitchens packed by people who have packed a thousand kitchens: plates on edge, glasses sleeved, cartons weighted so the bottom does not become a surprise.
• Labelling and inventory. Every carton marked by destination room and contents, which turns unloading from an archaeology project into a delivery.
• Furniture preparation. Beds dismantled, whitegoods secured, mattresses and lounges wrapped for transit.
• The pace. A crew packs a three-bedroom home in a day. The same house packed after work takes most families two to three weeks and their whole reserve of goodwill.

Unpacking at the destination is available as its own add-on, from boxes-into-rooms through to a full unpack with cartons removed.

Full pack, fragile pack, or pack it yourself

Full pack suits time-poor households, big homes, interstate and overseas moves, and anyone who has done the DIY version once and sworn an oath. It also links to protection: professionally packed cartons are packed to a standard the transit insurance likes, and for international moves that standard is mandatory, which is the subject of our guide to export-grade packing.

Fragile-only is the smart middle: professionals take the kitchen, glassware, artwork, mirrors and electronics, the categories where technique matters and breakage happens, and you box the linen, books and toys where technique does not. Most of the risk removed for a fraction of the full-pack price.

DIY packing works well with three rules: start two weeks earlier than feels necessary, label by destination room, and never make a carton heavier than one person can carry, which is the rule every DIY packer breaks with books.

A note on what professional packing quietly prevents: the two classic self-pack failures are the overloaded book carton that fails at the bottom on the stairs, and the under-padded glassware box that travels fine and unpacks as shards. Both are technique problems, not effort problems, and both are the exact reason the kitchen and the bookshelf are the first rooms worth handing over even on a tight budget.

What it costs in practice

As a Brisbane and Gold Coast guide: fragile-only packs commonly run $250 to $600, full packs $500 to $1,500 by house size, and materials-only (we deliver the boxes, you do the work) is the budget rung below that. Packing is quoted alongside the move itself through our home removals team, and combining pack and move in one booking beats booking them separately, because the packers set up the exact load the crew expects to carry. The full menu sits on the services page.

One honest tip that saves money either way: cull before anyone packs. Every carton not packed is labour, materials and truck space saved, and the fortnight before a move is the most decisive decluttering window a household ever gets.

Frequently asked questions

Want the packing off your plate? Get a quote for the move with packing included, and spend moving week living your life instead of wrapping it.