Most people overestimate what they need to do before a carpet fitter arrives. We move furniture as part of the job, including beds and wardrobes, so you do not need to empty the room. But a few things genuinely help the day go smoothly, and a couple of them are worth knowing well in advance.
What we handle
Furniture moving is ours. Beds and wardrobes are standard. For anything beyond the ordinary we work on fairness: if it can be moved we will move it, and if it genuinely cannot we will work around it. Tell us at the measure what is in the room so nothing is a surprise on the day.
We also lift and dispose of your old flooring, and we leave the place clean and tidy rather than leaving you with offcuts and grippers to deal with.
What helps if you can
Empty wardrobes and chests of drawers if they are heavy and need shifting. A full wardrobe is a genuinely different proposition to an empty one.
Take anything fragile or valuable off shelves and surfaces in the room. Fitting is not a delicate process and a tape measure catches things.
Somewhere reasonable to park matters more than you would think. Carpet comes on a roll and it is heavy, so a long carry from a distant space slows the job down.
If you have pets, having somewhere for them to be during the day is easier for everyone. Doors get propped open and tools get left out.
Think about doors early
A new floor often sits higher than the old one, particularly if you are moving from a worn carpet to a new one with better underlay. That can mean a door catches.
We have an in-house joiner so doors can be eased or trimmed, quoted separately per door. What is useful is deciding in advance, because it is easier to plan for than to discover on the day.
The subfloor question
This is the one thing that can genuinely change a job. If a subfloor needs levelling or a plywood overlay before anything is laid, that takes time and adds cost.
Where we can see it at the measure, we quote for it then. Sometimes the condition only becomes clear once the old flooring is lifted, in which case we include a contingency rate in your quote so you already know what it would cost rather than finding out on the day.
On the day itself
A bedroom takes about an hour, a lounge one to three hours, and stairs and landing three to four. Most whole-house jobs are done within a day.
You do not need to be there for the whole thing, but it helps if someone is around at the start so the team can confirm the plan, and at the end to look over the finished job.
For more on timings see how long carpet fitting takes, and for what is involved and what it costs, our fitting page and cost guide.