The most fragile of objects are the hardest to protect during home moves. Packing paintings and other artwork always proves the most difficult type of items to get right so they are fully protected. We need to use the right size and proportioned moving box in addition to protective packing materials to ensure paintings reach their destination in the same condition as we first packed them.
While difficult, we can achieve this task by taking the correct measures to correctly pack and protect your paintings using the most appropriate and best quality packing materials. Both cost effective and reusable, this gives protection to your paintings against the common dangers that can arise when moving, including:
- Damage to outside corners or frame of paintings
- Water damage from water ingress into packing box
- Scratches or marks from excess movement within the box
- Sharp foreign objects piercing box sidewall and damaging paintings
Lets find out how to best protect paintings using packing materials and specialized boxes.
Ideal Box For Paintings – Side Loading Rectangular Boxes
Side loading boxes are Kraft corrugated boxes that utilise a fold over flap style to allow easy loading and unloading of its contents. The boxes are ideally shaped to pack wide and flat items with minimal need for void fill. They work well for picture frames, small flat screen TVs, artwork, and paintings.
They provide many benefits over a regular cubed shape moving box for packing artwork, namely:
- Gives optimal shape for packing frames, paintings, artwork, pictures and TVs
- Makes unloading and loading of paintings and frames simple
- Full fold over flap provides additional protection at all sides of the box
Added features of many side loading boxes include convenient cut out handles in the sidewalls to allow for hand carrying of boxes.
Strengthen Boxes to Shield Paintings from Physical Damage
Puncture protection, stiffness of side walls, and tear protection are qualities of box improved as the ECT rating increases. Acting as a shield to your paintings these boxes give real tangible strength and robustness improvements with sidewalls reinforced by dual or triple walled protection as the ECT rating increases.
| ECT Rating | Maximum Weight Capacity | Number of Corrugated Walls |
|---|---|---|
| ECT-32 | 65lbs | Single |
| ECT-44 | 95lbs | Single |
| ECT-48 | 100lbs | Double |
| ECT-51 | 120lbs | Double |
| ECT-90 | 280lbs | Triple |
| ECT-155 | 300lbs | Triple |
In short, the thicker and more layers of wall the better your paintings are protected from outside forces when used in conjunction with the correct packing materials.
ECT stands for edge crush testing, a measure of the amount of force the sidewalls can handle before failing. It lends to increased ability to stack higher weight on the box without compromising its structural integrity. The box will hold its shape under high forces regardless of the loading conditions. This should be considered if moving multiple items at the same time, whereby the boxes must be stacked on one another, or other items are stacked upon the boxes for space saving purposes.
Its increased resistance under all unforeseen circumstances, should the box receive damage from impacts, from being dropped, or accidently having other items dropped on it, the double and triple walled boxes withstand these circumstances and more. Strong boxes give peace of mind that your items will reach their destination unharmed. This is regardless of the common hazards that can occur during a long distance, turbulent move.
Ideal Packing Materials for Paintings
Plastic Bubble Wrap
It’s necessary to use a plastic wrap protection such as a large air bubble plastic wrap. This gives cushioning and protects against many types of impacts and scratches.
For best protection at the most vulnerable parts (corners) it is recommended to use thick protective air pocket wrap. Taping it down onto an underlayer of wrap for full cushioning. These areas are where its likely the paintings will knock or scrape against other objects when being moved outside of the box. In addition there’s potential for a higher load to be concentrated on this point, increasing the chances of damage. This is especially important for paintings without a large frame.
Before wrapping it is recommended to use large flat pieces of cardboard across the height and width of the from and back of artwork. This provides a protection to front panels and back, including glass sections of the frame. The bubble wrap should wrap around paintings with theses cardboard pieces in place. These cardboard pieces could be from old, previously used packing boxes, or from new if you don’t have any lying around. If you don’t want to purchase any boxes, check out our guide on how to get free moving boxes.
Void Fill
Once wrapped we need to ensure we limit excess movement of paintings within the box. For damage to occur inside during moving, without any outside penetration or serious wall damage, there has to be excess movement within the box. Without movement paintings cannot bang against the inside of box walls or other items within the box. Restricting movement within the box as much as possible keeps your paintings the safest they can be.
The best way to restrict movement of your paintings is to use void fillers. When packing using this particular type of side loading box it is not practical or cost effective to fill the leftover space using packing paper or packing peanuts.
Air Filled Pillows
Air pillows are the optimal choice of packing material for this purpose. Pockets of air filled plastic that provide plush cushioning and keep your paintings in position. Air pillows can be packed inside the box to the point where the contents have almost no room to move regardless the angle the box is held.
This ensures that everything will be held in place during any transportation turbulence or rough manhandling or the boxes by movers. The toughened walled box combined with the wrapped paintings cushioned and held in position by air pillows mean the chances of damage are severely reduced.
Air pillows provide far more protection than traditional packing paper that has minimal cushioning or movement restricting qualities for larger, heavier items.
Additional Protection Against Water
Water damage can be the disastrous for art. It has potential to discolour and makes paintings more vulnerable to smearing and picking up dirt. Protection here is then required to increase the packaging’s level of water proofing.
Unlikely as it may be that your packaging will encounter any liquids during transportation or within storage. It can give you peace of mind to prepare for this unexpected misfortune.
Unfortunately packing boxes constructed from corrugated Kraft don’t provide much if any of this needed water protection. Here we need to make use of a plastic cover, that completely covers all sides from corner to corner to prevent ingress of water as much as possible.
This should be taped down to prevent the covers coming lose and free inside the box during transportation.
Conclusion – Packing Materials for Paintings
Protect your paintings during a move using selective and quality packing materials in the right way.
- Wrap you painting in bubble wrap with large cardboard pieces across the height and width of the painting, both from and back
- Use extra bubble wrap at the corners of the painting. This in order to protect this more vulnerable point that is most likely to be damaged
- Use an additional plain plastic sheet around the bubble wrapped painting to increase protection from water ingress
- Use a double or triple walled side loading picture box to load your paintings into
- Fill the free interior space of the box with protective air pillows. This greatly restricts the paintings movement within the box
- Ensure that good packing tape is used to make a good and secure seal with the fold over flap of the side loading box
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