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Moving into a new home with beautiful hardwood floors can be exciting. The moving process, though, can be difficult on those floors if you don’t take steps to protect them. Pushing, dragging, and even just sliding heavy pieces of furniture can cause havoc on these floors. That’s also not to mention people walking into the home with dirty shoes causing scuff marks. Luckily, there are steps you can take to properly protect your floors that don’t take a lot of time or cost a lot of money.

How to Protect Floors During Moving Day

The first step is to consider where people will move through the home. How will they enter the home with furniture or boxes? What paths will they travel? Whenever possible, do what you can to minimize walking through spaces where the floors are in good condition.

Next, be sure to provide some guidance to movers, even professionals. Ask them to minimize dragging or pushing the furniture onto wood surfaces, asking them to pick up and move the items instead. Let them know it’s important to you to protect these surfaces as best as possible.

What Can I Put on the Floors to Protect Them During a Move?

A visit to a home improvement store (or a bit of shopping online) will offer a bunch of ideas for protecting floors during a move.

Homasote 440

The higher end and more effective option is the use of a product like Homasote 440. This material is a type of shock-absorbing product you can place anywhere. Consider this type of product if you have areas of the home particularly vulnerable, such as right in the entranceway where a team may place a piece of furniture after carrying it over the threshold.

Doormats

You can also place doormats near these spaces and throughout the walking paths to move furniture into place. That way, it offers a bit of shock absorption when they place the item down and helps soak up moisture and mud from wet shoes.

Cardboard – only sometimes

Yet another option is to use cardboard. Chances are good you’ll have a lot of it available if you’re using boxes for your move. In some cases, this can work well, however, there are limitations. Cardboard should be a last option because it can easily slide, causing someone to fall if they aren’t careful. You may be able to tape it to the ground, but that means you’ll end up with tape residue on the wood floors, which can be damaging as well.

Red rosin paper

Look in the flooring section for this product. It’s typically used as an underlayment and moisture barrier under wood floors. It’s absorbent to a degree and offers just enough support to those walking in. It also will lay flat on the ground in most situations. It’s made of 100% recycled materials, so it’s good for the planet, too.

If you cannot find this, you may find a brown version that’s much the same. Some moving companies use this, and home improvement stores may sell it close to the boxes. It’s a thicker paper that’s heavy enough to handle food traffic. It’s a good option for preventing scratches.

Will Heavy Furniture Damage My Floors?

A piece of heavy furniture could damage your floors during a move, depending on how someone moves it. Here are some things to keep in mind.

• Picking up and dropping a piece of heavy furniture, like a couch, could lead to dents in the wood itself from where the feet connect with the ground. Even dropping it just a few inches can do this.
• Sliding the furniture over the wood floors could scratch it, even if there’s ample finish on the floors. Anything jagged or with a sharp edge could cause deep scratches that require buffing out.

How Can I Move Heavy Furniture Without Damaging the Floors?

What can you do when there’s a big piece of furniture that needs to make it across the floor without any damage? Use multiple people to pick it up and carry it in a safe manner. That may mean using a harness to minimize any risk.

Then, invest in furniture sliders. These are fairly inexpensive and may provide enough protection for your floors as you move items. You’ll place them under each corner of the heavy object, lifting just one corner at a time to place them. Then, you can simply push the furniture into place. You can leave them in place if you think you’ll need to move items again.

If you don’t have these, place the furniture on a piece of cardboard or a large runner and move it that way. This helps to provide some protection to the floor as the item moves across it. You’ll need to ensure you pay close attention during this process to eliminate the risk of tripping.

Move with Confidence

When you have these large types of furniture pieces, you’ll certainly benefit from having a professional help you with the process. There are a few things you can do to ensure the process goes well.

• Try to avoid moving furniture when the weather is wet if you’re moving items from one location to the next. That minimizes the risk of slips and falls.
• Do the measuring beforehand. That way, you’re not moving the furniture more often than you should.
• Communicate with movers about your wood floors ahead of time.

The right tools and processes can protect your floors from damage, even when you have a beautiful armoire that needs to be placed or a chunky living room table.

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