Storing Your Belongings During a Home Renovation

By the Make Space team

Renovations have a way of turning every untouched room into a storage unit you didn't plan for. Furniture gets pushed into whatever room isn't being worked on that week, boxes end up stacked in the hallway, and dust gets into things you'd rather it didn't. Self storage solves the practical problem, but only if you plan it around the renovation itself rather than treating it like a house move.

The average UK household has spent around £52,000 on renovations over the past five years, according to the Federation of Master Builders, and that spend rarely lands as one quick job, so it's easy to underestimate how long the work will actually take. A single-room refit might run four to six weeks. A kitchen or bathroom typically needs six to ten, once you count the wait for materials and trades. A loft conversion or full renovation can run several months.

It’s worth building in a buffer, since delays are common rather than the exception. A Federation of Master Builders and Chartered Institute of Building report from April 2026 found that 49% of builders had delayed jobs because of skilled worker shortages, and 72% of small and medium building firms were struggling to find tradespeople in the second half of 2025. If your contractor gives you a finish date, treat it as the earliest realistic date, not the latest. Book storage on a no-fixed-term basis so a few extra weeks doesn't mean scrambling to extend or empty a unit on short notice.

Book storage to arrive a few days before the trades do, not on the morning work starts. Most renovation delays happen at the beginning, when a delivery is late or a wall turns out to need more work than the survey suggested, and you don't want to be moving furniture out of a room a plumber is already standing in.

If you're storing a full room or more, get boxes and protective covers sorted first. A sofa or mattress that goes straight into storage without a cover picks up dust and marks in transit, even if it's only travelling a short distance. Make Space sells boxes and packing materials if you'd rather not source them separately.

You don't need to empty the whole house. Focus on what's actually in the way of the work, and what the work could damage.

Sofas, cabinets, and anything with a soft or upholstered surface. These pick up dust fastest and are the most awkward to move twice, so it's worth storing them for the full renovation rather than shuffling them from room to room.

Wardrobes and drawer units, if the room is being replastered or the floor is coming up. Clothes and bedding are light enough to pack in the largest boxes you have, since fewer boxes means less to carry.

Tools and garden furniture store well here. Anything flammable or liquid, paint tins, petrol for the mower, and similar, needs to go somewhere else entirely, since self storage units can't accept hazardous items. Clear them out of the shed and garden before work starts so there's nothing sitting near an active building site, and store them safely at a neighbour's, a garage, or wherever you're staying during the work instead.

Renovation storage and moving-house storage aren't the same job, even though people often ask for the same size unit. A house move puts everything you own into storage at once. A renovation usually only needs the contents of the rooms being worked on, plus tools and materials the contractor isn't storing on site, which tends to be less volume but a more awkward mix of shapes: furniture alongside flat-pack boxes and the odd length of timber.

Make Space's Room Size Estimator gives you a visual guide to how much fits in each size before you commit, and pricing is quoted against what you actually need to store rather than a fixed room-by-room price list. If you're only clearing one or two rooms, it's worth getting a quote before assuming you need a full unit.

A few things are worth keeping out of any storage unit, renovation or otherwise. Paint, solvents, and anything flammable shouldn't go into a storage unit at all, partly for safety and partly because most storage insurance won't cover them. Anything you might need to produce for a warranty claim, like a receipt for a new boiler or a certificate for electrical work, is safer kept at home or with your paperwork than boxed up for months. And if you're midway through choosing fittings or fixtures, keep the samples out of storage. Digging through boxes to find a tile sample slows the job down more than it saves space. For the fuller list of what is safe to store, our guide to what you can put in self storage covers it in more detail.

You don't lose everything to a box for the length of a renovation. If you know you'll need something partway through, whether that's out-of-season clothing, tools, or a specific piece of furniture once a room is finished, it's worth packing that separately and labelling the box clearly rather than burying it at the back of the unit. Make Space's Clapton, Billericay and Horsham sites are staffed during opening hours, so getting back into your unit mid-project doesn't mean booking a special appointment.

Storage during a renovation works best when it's planned around the job, not added on once the mess has already started. If you're weighing up how much space you'll need and for how long, our home renovation storage page has a free quote tool that takes location, duration, and rough volume into account, and our Lowest Price Guarantee means if you find a better comparable price locally, we'll beat it.

Yes. Storage is available during staffed opening hours at each site, so you can get back in to swap items or collect something you didn't expect to need until later in the project.

It depends on how much you're storing and for how long, rather than a fixed room-by-room rate. Getting a quote based on the actual volume, using the Room Size Estimator, is more accurate than guessing a unit size upfront.

Most storage providers require some form of contents cover while your belongings are in their unit, and it's worth checking whether your existing home contents policy extends to storage or whether you need a separate policy for the duration.

A house move puts your entire home into storage at once, usually for a fixed period either side of a completion date. Renovation storage is usually a smaller volume tied to specific rooms, for a length of time that depends on the build rather than a moving date, which is why a no-fixed-term contract suits it better than a fixed-term one.

Yes, as long as they're not flammable, liquid, or otherwise restricted. Tins of paint, solvents, and gas canisters shouldn't go into a storage unit at all, but timber, tiles, and packaged materials are fine alongside household items.

Book to arrive a few days before work starts, not on the morning it begins. Most renovation delays happen early on, so having storage already in place means a late delivery or a longer-than-expected first fix doesn't leave you moving furniture around trades who are already on site.

You can usually add or upgrade a unit rather than start a new contract elsewhere, since renovation storage needs often grow as a project uncovers more work than expected. It's worth flagging this possibility when you first get a quote, so the site can tell you what's available to move into if you need it.

Not necessarily. Make Space offers free van hire for move-in, which is worth using even for a renovation-sized load, since it saves hiring separately for what's often an awkward mix of furniture and boxed materials rather than a full house move.