The guide
What Fits in a Luton Van? A London Load Guide in full
The dimensions that matter
A standard Luton body is about 4 metres long, 2 metres wide and 2.2 metres high, with a tail lift rated for white goods and a Luton peak above the cab for mattresses and soft items. That is roughly 20 cubic metres of usable space.
Height is the part people underestimate. Loaded properly — boxes stacked to the roof against the bulkhead, furniture standing on end, mattresses in the peak — a Luton takes far more than the same items piled loosely to waist height.
A room-by-room load check
Rather than guess at cubic metres, count furniture. This is the load a single Luton comfortably takes in one run with two movers.
- Bedroom: double bed and mattress, two-door wardrobe, chest of drawers, bedside tables
- Living room: three-seater sofa, armchair, TV unit, coffee table, bookcase
- Kitchen: fridge freezer, washing machine, small table and two chairs, six boxes
- Everywhere else: around twenty medium boxes, a bike, a suitcase or three
When one van is genuinely enough
Studio and one-bed flat moves fit a single Luton in the overwhelming majority of London jobs. So do student moves, marketplace collections, self-storage runs and the classic 'we bought a sofa and cannot get it home'.
Two-bed flats are the boundary. A minimal two-bed fits; a two-bed with a home office, a full kitchen and a loft's worth of storage does not. We ask for photos precisely so nobody discovers this at 4pm with half the flat still on the pavement.
When to stop booking vans and book a lorry
Once you are moving a house rather than a flat, hourly pricing works against you. Three van runs across London is a full day of driving that a 7.5-tonne lorry does in one load, at a fixed price set after a survey.
The switching point is roughly a three-bed home, or any move with a loft, a garage and a completion date attached to it. That is house removals, and it will cost less than the van bill would have.
Loading a van so it holds more
Heavy and square first, against the bulkhead. Appliances upright and strapped. Sofas on end down one side. Mattresses flat in the Luton peak. Boxes stacked in columns with the heaviest at the bottom, and soft bags wedged into gaps at the end.
Loose items are what waste space and time. Twenty properly packed boxes take less room than fifteen carrier bags, and they can be stacked — which is the whole point.