What size storage unit do I need? A room by room guide

Picking the wrong unit is the most common mistake people make with storage, and it goes wrong in both directions. Book too big and you pay every month for empty floor. Book too small and on collection day you're standing in the driveway deciding which sofa to leave behind. This guide answers the question of what size storage unit you need, room by room, so you get it right the first time.

If you'd rather skip the reading, our storage calculator does the same job. Add your furniture and it tells you the smallest unit that fits and what it costs.

Start with floor area, then think in height

Storage units are sold by floor area. A 10 x 10 unit is 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep, which makes 100 square feet. That's the number on the price. But what decides whether your things fit is volume, because furniture and boxes stack.

In a unit we plan on stacking to about 7 feet. That's high enough to use the space well and low enough that nobody has to climb a ladder to lift a box of plates down. We also leave about a fifth of the space free so you can walk in and reach the back. Nobody wants to unload half a unit to find one carton.

What size storage unit for each kind of home

Here's how a typical Pakistani household maps onto our unit sizes. These line up with the presets in our calculator, which were worked out from the actual volume of the furniture, not by feel.

For a four or five bedroom house, or a shop's whole stock, a 40 ft container at PKR 50,000 a month is usually the better fit. It holds far more than our largest unit and works out cheaper per square foot.

Room by room: what takes the space

Bedrooms and living rooms are easy to judge. It's the kitchen, the store room and the boxes that people get wrong.

Bedrooms

A double bed frame, two side tables, a dressing table and a wardrobe is roughly one bedroom. Taken apart, a bed frame lies flat and hardly counts. Standing up whole, it can take as much room as the wardrobe. Mattresses go on their side, never flat under other things.

Living and dining

The three seater sofa is usually the single largest item in the house, and corner sofas are bigger again. A dining table with six chairs takes much less room than you'd think once the legs come off and the chairs stack in pairs.

Kitchen and appliances

Fridges, freezers, washing machines and ovens are tall and can't have anything stacked on them. They're the reason an apparently small flat sometimes needs a 10 x 10 rather than a 5 x 5. Count them separately.

The store room and the boxes

This is where estimates fall apart. A family that has lived in one house for ten years usually has far more cartons than they expect. As a rough guide, thirty standard moving boxes take about the same space as a three seater sofa.

A quick way to check your own house

1. Walk through each room and list the large pieces: beds, wardrobes, sofas, tables, appliances.
2. Count the boxes you'll need. Be generous, then add a few more.
3. Cross off anything you're selling, giving away or taking with you.
4. Put the remaining list into the calculator, or send it to us and we'll work it out.

If two sizes look close, it's usually worth taking the smaller one and packing it well. A carefully loaded 10 x 15 often holds what a carelessly loaded 10 x 20 would.

When a container makes more sense than a unit

A shipping container isn't just a big unit. It's sealed, nobody else's goods share it, and you can pack it wall to wall and floor to roof, because you won't need a walkway in the same way. That changes the maths.

A 20 ft container holds about 1,170 cu ft and costs PKR 30,000 a month. That's more than a 10 x 15 unit holds, for a price inside the same band. So if your load is just too big for a 10 x 15 but well short of a full 10 x 20, a 20 ft container can be the cheaper answer. Our calculator flags this automatically when it applies, and we've compared the two properly in storage container vs storage unit.

Common sizing mistakes

• Booking for the whole house. You almost never store everything. Some goes with you, some gets sold.
• Forgetting the outdoor things. Bicycles, a motorbike, garden furniture and the generator all take floor space.
• Leaving furniture assembled. Ten minutes with a screwdriver can save you a whole size.
• Using bags instead of boxes. Bags don't stack. Boxes of the same size do.

Questions people ask about unit sizes

Can I move to a different size later?

Yes. If you take things out and the unit is half empty, ask and we'll move you to a smaller one. If you need more room, we'll find a bigger one or add a second. Storage runs month by month, so the size can change with you.

Is it better to be safe and go one size up?

Usually not. A size up costs more every single month, and most people overestimate rather than underestimate. Work out your list properly, dismantle what comes apart, and you'll often find the smaller unit is enough. If it's genuinely borderline, ask us before collection day and we'll look at your list with you.

How high can I stack?

We plan on about 7 feet, which keeps everything within reach without a ladder. Heavy boxes go at the bottom and nothing heavy goes above head height. Furniture with legs, like tables and chairs, can often have boxes stacked on top once it's protected with a blanket.

Do appliances need to be stored upright?

Fridges and freezers should stay upright, because laying them down can push oil into places it shouldn't be. Washing machines are best upright too. That's another reason appliances take more floor space than people expect.

Still not sure?

That's normal. Most people we speak to aren't sure either, and it takes us a couple of minutes to help. Send a list or a few photos of the rooms and we'll tell you which unit fits and what it costs per month. The full range is on the size guide, and the prices page has every figure in one place.