Piano Removals

Piano removals sit outside what a standard furniture move can safely handle. Williams & Yates move grand and upright pianos as part of a full UK or international relocation, planned at survey alongside the fine art, antiques and furniture the instrument stands beside at home.

This is specialist handling within a wider move rather than a single item collection. The instrument is assessed in the room it stands in, the access route is agreed well before collection day, and the same coordinator who manages the rest of your move manages this part of it. Piano removals sit within our wider Specialist Item Removals service.

Both are covered here. A grand piano sits horizontally, with its frame and strings laid out flat on three legs. An upright stands vertically, with its strings running up the back of a case built to sit against a wall.

A piano needs specialist handling because it combines concentrated, unevenly distributed weight with a mechanism held under constant stress. The internal action is calibrated to fine tolerances, and the strings carry a combined tension of many tons against a cast iron frame. Weight alone is only half the problem.

The tension is the part most people underestimate. A full size piano carries somewhere around 220 to 230 strings, each under roughly 70 to 90kg of load. The cast iron plate inside the case is there to hold it.

The weight itself is the more obvious problem. A grand is roughly 230kg for a baby grand and well over 500kg for a concert instrument, as a general range. Where that weight sits matters more than the total. In a grand, the plate and the strings it carries are weighted towards the tail and the bass side, so the centre of gravity is nowhere near the point anyone would instinctively take hold of the case.

Preparation begins with the lid, which is lowered and secured before the music desk comes off. The pedal lyre, the assembly beneath the keyboard housing the pedals and their connecting rods, is detached and wrapped as its own item, because it connects directly to the internal mechanism and takes the damage if it is treated as part of the case.

The legs come off next, one at a time, with the body supported throughout. The balance shifts as each one goes and shifts considerably once the last is removed. The body is then lowered onto a padded skid board along its flat, straight bass side edge, so the weight spreads across the board instead of loading the curve. Wrapped and strapped in that position, it travels on a dolly.

Most of the padding goes on the bottom corner of the bass end, as that’s the most common site of chips and veneer damage on a grand, precisely because that corner carries the case once the instrument is on its side.

An upright is handled differently. It is rarely dismantled and travels standing, strapped to a four-wheel piano dolly that spreads the load across the base. Its legs are decorative and carry no structural load, so they are never used as a lifting or leverage point. Force applied there can snap a leg and lose the balance in the same moment.

All of this is why the survey matters. No two instruments and no two properties present quite the same problem, and the method for yours is agreed before anyone touches it.

An international move adds three things to a piano: protective casing built around the instrument, documentation for the border, and a long journey across changing temperature and humidity. All three are settled during planning, well before collection day.

Our in-house crating and case making workshop builds to virtually any shape or size, and crates for international consignments are made from certified timber meeting ISPM 15, the phytosanitary standard for wood packaging. Where a destination property is not ready in time, an instrument can wait in fine art storage instead of an ordinary unit.

Climate is the factor most often glossed over. Steinway’s own care guidance puts the ideal environment at a constant 20°C and 45 to 70% relative humidity, while Yamaha specifies a tighter 40 to 45%. Yamaha also warns that warming a cold instrument too quickly condenses moisture onto the strings and metal parts.

Documentation is the third piece. One client moved a piano from the UK to Japan and singled out that work in their review, given how demanding Japanese customs clearance is. Your coordinator handles it alongside the customs, duties and country specific requirements covering the rest of the consignment.

Antique Pianos and Ivory Keys

Some older pianos have ivory key coverings, and that changes what is needed to move them across a border. Two separate rules apply, and satisfying one does not satisfy the other.

Domestically, GOV.UK guidance on dealing in items containing ivory sets out an exemption under the Ivory Act 2018 for a musical instrument made before 1975 containing less than 20% ivory by volume. Ivory on a piano is normally a thin veneer on the keys, so most affected instruments are expected to fall within that threshold. The assessment covers the whole item though, the exemption has to be registered at a cost of £20, and importing or exporting counts as dealing.

Separately, elephant ivory is a CITES listed material, so the border movement itself can require its own permit whatever the domestic position. Permits are issued by the Animal and Plant Health Agency, which asks applicants to allow around 30 days, and the consignment must travel through a designated point of entry or exit with the permit presented there. One clarification, since it comes up often: the CITES Musical Instrument Certificate is designed for touring musicians crossing borders repeatedly, not for a one off relocation, which would normally need a standard permit instead.

Williams & Yates handle CITES documentation as a matter of course on fine art and antiques. Whether any of it applies to your instrument is established at survey, long before the border.

A piano is reassembled, positioned and levelled at delivery, then left to acclimatise before it is tuned. Wood, felt and strings all respond to a new room’s temperature and humidity, so a tuning carried out on the day of arrival will typically drift as the instrument settles into its surroundings.

On a grand, the legs are refitted and the body brought back upright, the pedal lyre reconnected and the lid returned, then the instrument is positioned and levelled where it will stand. An upright is wheeled into place and levelled.

The worry most people have is whether it will still sound right afterwards. Piano technicians generally hold the view that a correctly handled move does not itself put an instrument out of tune, and that pitch drift afterwards comes from the change of climate rather than the journey. Established practice is to leave a piano some weeks in its new room before the first tuning, longer where it has moved into a noticeably drier or more humid country. There is no codified standard behind that, so the timing is worth agreeing with a technician at destination instead of booking it for the week of delivery.