How to Label Moving Boxes – An Easy and Foolproof Way

When moving home it is essential that you clearly label your moving boxes so that you will know exactly which room the box should be placed in within your new home, and you can identify if a box goes missing in transit.

It also makes unpacking so much easier too.

There are many ways in which you can label your moving boxes when moving home, from printed QR codes to just writing on the boxes with a marker pen.

But efficient labelling is often laborious and although they start with the best intentions, many people end up doing just the minimum or no labelling at all.

Then when it comes to finding things and unpacking, chaos ensues.

So we would like to introduce you to a labelling system which is quick, easy, and meets the needs of anyone moving home, whether they want to unpack immediately, will be putting things into storage, or will place everything in one room whilst they decorate or renovate the rest of the house.

Unless you are moving overseas, in which case you need a packing inventory for customs, or have very expensive things being moved, in which case you need a packing list for insurance purposes, or you want to be super organised, with this labelling system there is no real need to make a packing inventory either.

All you need to label your boxes is:

• Various colours of packing tape for identifying rooms
• Red, Amber, and Green packing tape
• ‘Fragile’ labels or tape
• Marker pen

Packing tip: A tape gun is really useful as it makes sealing your boxes so much quicker, you will spend hours looking for the end of the tape otherwise which is super frustrating.

You may also like to read: How Many Boxes Do I Need to Move Home? Find out how many boxes or packing crates you need to pack the average 1, 2, 3, or 4-bedroom home.

Step-By-Step How to Label a Moving Box Quickly and Easily

Read on to discover how to label your moving boxes quickly and simply to make moving day and unpacking so much easier and quicker.

Assign a Colour to Each Room

Assign one colour of packing tape for each room, so blue for the bathroom, red for bedroom 1, green for bedroom 2 etc.

When packing, it is easier to use coloured tape because you will seal the boxes with the coloured tape assigned to that room and it will be visible from all sides of the box.

Keep a length of each colour of tape because when you get to your new home you will fix the tape to the corresponding room doorframe.

This helps the unloaders identify exactly which room the box should be placed in, and without the need for them to keep asking you which room each box goes in, or the boxes getting mixed up, it makes unloading so much simpler and faster.

You could of course use coloured labels, or even lengths of coloured wool tapped to the boxes to identify the rooms, whatever works best for you.

As long as the identifying colour can be clearly seen from every side of the box there is no problem.

You may also like to read: Alternative Packing Materials for Moving Home in which we look at how you can use commonly found things around the home to pack your things and save some money on packing materials.

Use a Traffic Light Packing System

When packing the boxes we will label the boxes using a traffic light system: red, amber, and green.

• Red – The very first boxes to be packed and the last boxes that need unpacking or that may be stored in the loft.
• Amber – Items that you will need once the essentials are unpacked and the home is set up.
• Green – Essential items that you will need in the first few days of arriving at your new home.

Start packing the things that you use the least and will not need before the move. This could be seasonal clothing or a guest bedroom for example.

You will seal the boxes with the coloured tape that you have assigned that room then just run a length of red, amber, or green tape around the middle of the sides of the entire box so that again it can be identified from any angle.

So the very first box to be packed is items that you will not need for the foreseeable future.

• This box is Red 1 – Just write the number 1 on each side of the box.
• The next box is Red 2 and so on.
• For example, you may get to Red 20 which might be ornaments (not that important to unpack just yet)

The next set of boxes will be identified by amber-coloured tape:

• Amber 1 could be baking dishes for example (will be needed in the near future)
• Going up to Amber 20 which might be spare towels (don’t need to be unpacked immediately but they will be needed soon)

The final things you pack are things that you are going to need access to straight after moving into your new home.

• Green 1 would be essential items that you may need in the next day or so after moving in.
• Green 20 would have the things you need immediately after you move into your new home.

So, just to recap, each box has 2 colours of tape and a number:

• One colour of tape to identify the room
• One colour of tape to identify the unpacking in order of importance
• The box number identifies in which order you are likely to need the contents of that box

If the items within the box are fragile or require extra care when being handled, you should place ‘fragile’ labels or run a length of tape with ‘fragile’ written on it around the box.

You may also like to read: Everything You Need to Know About Packing for a Home Move in which we answer all your packing questions such as how long it takes to pack, how you save money on moving costs, and how to avoid common packing mistakes and much more.

Load and Unload By Colour

Because you are packing in a logical way, when you stack your boxes ready for moving, the least used things (your red boxes) are at the back of the pile.

The boxes in front of those are amber and the last things you packed are green which are in the very front.

When loading your van you can then load in the order green first, then amber, and finally red.

This means that the first boxes off the van will be the red ones which will then be stacked in their respective rooms at the back with the amber boxes next, then finally the green boxes.

By unloading and stacking in this way it gives you easy and immediate access to the most important boxes to be unpacked first.

And because the boxes are colour-coded and numbered, it is easy to see if a box has been put into the wrong room or has been left on the removal van for example.

What if you are Colour Blind or one of the Removal Team are?

Colours stand out more and it is easy to just glance along a stack of boxes to see if a box is in the wrong place. But what if you or one of the removal team is colour-blind?

You could just write on each side of the box.

For example Kitchen, Green 11.

You would then fix some masking tape with ‘kitchen’ written on it on the doorframe of the kitchen in your new home.

It is obviously not such a prominent way to identify your boxes but should be good enough for this labelling system to work.

You may also like to read: 12 Space Saving Packing Tips for a Cheaper Home Move. In this guide, we offer you 12 ways in which you can save time, space, and money when packing your things ready to move home.

Good luck with your home move and come back and tell us how you got on using this system or even how it can be improved upon.