What to Do When Furniture Will NOT Go Through the Door [10 Fitting Steps]

Moving oversized furniture is never fun.

Picture the following moving day scenario – your large furniture pieces are already packed up and you’re about to take them out to the moving vehicle, one by one.

And then, as you’re carrying the large living room couch with a couple of friends, something unexpected happens – the couch won’t fit through the door.

Oops! You surely didn’t see that coming, did you?

Beds, sofas, dressers, desks, and tables can happen to be too big to fit through doorways, narrow hallways and even tight staircases when the time has come to move them to another home. And should that ever happens to you, then it’s easy to feel frustrated, angry and even puzzled – genuinely baffled as to how those huge furniture items were moved where they are in the first place.

Don’t despair if your furniture won’t fit through the door or the hallway. The good news is that there are roughly 10 steps you can take to solve that unforeseen problem so that you can continue with your house move as scheduled.

[10 STEPS] Here’s what to do when your furniture will not fit through the door or the hallway.

Step 1. Measure up your furniture

When moving large pieces of furniture out of your current home or into your new one, it pays to have done your homework in advance so that you can be better prepared for the eventuality of getting stuck. They say that prevention is the best medicine and that quote rings truer than ever when moving huge furniture items.

The first step to solving the furniture-won’t-go-through-the door problem is to avoid that problem altogether. How? It’s simple: measure the dimensions of the furniture item, then measure the doorway or hallway and compare the results to get a better idea of what your next steps will be.

Here’s an example of how to measure a large couch, but you can use the measuring procedure for other types of large furniture as well. So, get your measuring tape and complete the following furniture measurements:

• Height (H). To get the accurate height, measure the distance from the floor to the highest point of the couch, usually its backrest.
• Diagonal height (DH). Measure the distance from the front corner point of an armrest to the opposite back corner of the couch. By knowing the diagonal depth of your furniture, you will know if a piece can fit through a small opening when you position it standing up.
• Width (W). Measure the distance between the two widest points on the couch sides.
• Depth (D). Measure the distance between the two deepest points – one on the front of the couch and the other one on its back.
• Diagonal depth (DD). Measure the distance from the top left (or top right) corner of the armrest to the opposite bottom corner of the item.

Write down the measurements of your large furniture so that you don’t forget them.

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Step 2.  Measure your doorways

Naturally, the second step to making sure that your huge furniture pieces will somehow fit through the seemingly smaller door and narrower hallways is to measure the openings that the oversized furniture will have to go through on its way to the moving truck (when moving out) or into its destination room (when moving in).

There’s nothing too complicated here – you’ll only need to measure the height and width of each door, hallway, elevator, or staircase along the intended way. If you plan on carrying large furniture pieces down or up staircases, take the railings into consideration when you’re preparing your plan of action.

Once you have the dimensions of the openings, compare them to the measurements of the oversized items you’re moving. Basically, one quick look at the measurements should tell you whether you’re expected to hit trouble, and if you do, how big that trouble will be.

Remember, numbers never lie.

Step 3. Assess your options

While you’re getting ready to take your large furniture pieces out of the current home or move them inside the new residence, you should take a moment to assess your viable options and to choose the best course of action.

Whatever you choose to do, just don’t be hasty in your decisions because getting stuck in the doorway with a big and heavy furniture piece will cause you to lose 10x more valuable time. And what about the toll that stressful situation will take on your nervous system?

And analysis and comparison of the abovementioned measurements should give you these 3 possible scenarios:

• Scenario 1. Your furniture pieces will fit comfortably through each opening along the way. That’s good news right there.
• Scenario 2. Your furniture items are a bit larger (several inches) than the measured doors and hallways. That’s still ok as there are good ways to safely squeeze your large furniture through the openings (read on to find more).
• Scenario 3. Your furniture pieces are much larger than the dimensions of the doors and hallways along the intended exit path. That may or may not be a big problem simply because below you’ll learn about a number of effective methods of getting furniture through a doorway. All in all, it’s great to know that you still have one fool-proof solution to your furniture issue even if all your DIY attempts fail – see Step 10 for more info.

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Step 4. Get enough manpower

This step is about ensuring that you won’t, all of a sudden, find yourself entirely on your own when the time comes for moving the heavy and large furniture in your home. It’s clear that you’ve made the informed decision to NOT hire professional furniture movers, which automatically leaves you with greatly reduced manpower on the day of the move.

You’re going to need at least two other helpers to take your enormous furniture items out of your house or apartment without inflicting any property damage or sustaining personal injuries of any sort. If possible, gather up more than 2 friends to give you a hand (the more the better), but the 3-person minimum is a safety requirement that you shouldn’t just ignore.

That’s right, you need enough manpower to get your big couch through a tiny door or fit that massive dresser through the tight hallway in the general direction of the moving truck. Be considerate towards your pals and reach out to them as early as you can so that they can reserve that date and time for you.

Keep in mind that if you fail to secure at least a couple of helpers for that furniture challenge, then you’d better quit on that idea and contact experienced furniture movers instead.

Step 5. Disassemble oversized furniture

If the measurements have given you bad news (Scenario 2 or Scenario 3 in Step 3), it’s time to prove your resourcefulness by taking these next several steps with the purpose of solving the furniture fitting problem.

This step is highly logical – disassemble your enormous furniture so that the removed parts reduce the overall size of the main frame. If there’s a safe way to break down a huge furniture piece into smaller sections, then just do it.

Remove any protruding parts that can be detached without any damage – legs, arms, doors, panels, decorations, etc. In the majority of cases, furniture legs cause the most trouble so see to it that you take them off, either by unscrewing them or by pulling them out. Basically, your idea is to leave the big piece of furniture down its bare structural minimum.

Remember to pack the disassembled furniture parts separately using bubble wrap or thick furniture blankets for extra protection.

Step 6. Attempt different angles

What to do if your furniture won’t fit through the door? Improvise.

Simply put, you should know best what to do if you get stuck in the doorway with a gigantic piece of furniture simply because you’re there on that spot and are able to see both the problem and its solution.

Keep repeating to yourself that there’s a good solution and you only need to find it. After all, those big pieces of furniture made it safely through the very first time they were brought into the room. Right?

This step is all about improvising whenever you find yourself in a tight spot – just think about the optimal exit angles of the furniture piece in relation to the smaller opening.

The first thing you can do is maneuver slowly around the door frame to hit that specific angle that will let you pass unscathed. Remember that changing the exit angles can really make a difference while moving oversized furniture through tight openings. All your movements should be slow and calculated.

The second thing to try out is to stand the couch or another furniture piece vertically, on its end, and then try to twist it cautiously into the space of the doorway. As long as you’ve got the right angle, slow and precise movements should be enough to fit your furniture through the door or hallway.

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Step 7. Try squeezing it through

Sometimes you’ll only need a few extra inches to safely fit some of your larger furniture through doors and hallways. For example, what to do if your sofa won’t fit through the door? The answer may surprise you: just squeeze it through.

When it comes to sofas and couches, they do have soft sides that can be compressed damage-free so that they can pass through the narrow doorway. In those cases, it’s about finding those extra inches of space by squeezing in the upholstered furniture areas.

However, before you decide to try this simple solution, there are a couple of precautions you’re advised to take to keep things from taking a bad turn:

• have your furniture piece wrapped in stretch wrap so that it won’t get dirty while it’s being rubbed against the door frame;
• protect your fingers from injury by wearing high-quality work gloves and minding where you place your hands while completing that furniture moving maneuver.

Step 8. Remove the door (temporarily)

Even when you’ve followed the above steps to fitting furniture through a doorway, you may still find yourself stuck with a big sofa, desk, dresser, table or another bulky household item. Sometimes you may need just a bit of extra space to make it through – do you find that inch or two?

One unusual way to create more space when trying to fit large furniture through small doorways and narrow hallways is to remove temporarily the door. That hack may not always be possible, but whenever it is, it’s definitely worth a try.

Discuss this option with your helpers and decide if you’re up to the task. Make sure you know exactly what you’re doing so that you don’t end up with a bigger problem than the one you’re facing at the moment.

Together with a friend, push the problematic door up to release it from its hinges, then place it somewhere out of the way. Remember to do this slowly and cautiously.

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Step 9. Take off the door frame

If the previous step didn’t work like you expected, there’s one last trick you could try to get a bit of extra space – no more than an inch, if that much. That’s right, we’re talking about removing temporarily the door frame – if that’s even an option at all.

Taking off the door frame after you’ve just removed the door itself sounds like a desperate move, and it is! However, the truth is that desperate times call for desperate measures, and that last step may as well save Moving day for you.

This step will only work if the door frame is made of wood and it’s fixed in place with tiny nails which you can see, reach and take out with the appropriate tool. If you choose to resort to this ultimate step to getting big furniture through the door, then you’ll need to reposition the door frame once you’ve taken the huge furniture item in or out.

CAUTION: Use this step ONLY if you know what you’re doing. Removing door frames can be dangerous and you may end up with costly property damage. And even though it’s an option to get your furniture through a doorway, we do NOT recommend this step.

Step 10. Ask furniture movers for assistance

Sometimes no matter how hard you try to do something, things just won’t work out the way you want them to. And even though it’s tough to admit defeat, at times you simply have to do it to avoid further complications.

In case none of the above steps has worked for you, then it’s time to call in qualified help to help you out. Ultimately, it’s important to know when to give up because being excessively relentless could lead to property damage and even personal injuries.

Fill in a quick quote to get contacted by professional furniture movers and to learn how much it will cost you to have your large furniture moved quickly and safely.

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