Moving a flat-screen TV, from wall to box to stand

A flat-screen TV is one of the few things in a home that can be ruined by a single bad lift. The panel is thin, the glass flexes, and the screen hates pressure on its face. TVs come up on most of our moves, and our approach is always the same: the TV comes off the wall if it can be done with standard tools, it goes into a proper TV box, it rides upright, and at the new home we connect it and set it up on a stand or piece of furniture. What we never do is mount it on the new wall.

Most wall mounts release with ordinary hand tools: the TV lifts off a bracket or unbolts from an arm. If yours does, the crew takes it down as part of the move, and the time it takes is simply part of the hourly job. Some setups are different: a TV recessed into a niche, a motorized lift, an articulating arm bolted into masonry, or a mount that needs a special key. Those need specialized tools, and our crews carry standard tools only, so for those we ask you to have the installer remove the TV before move day. If you are not sure which kind you have, a photo of the mount when you ask for a quote is enough for David to tell you.

The bracket itself stays on the wall unless you ask us to take it. Patching and painting the holes is not part of the move.

Mounting a TV is construction work, not moving. Whether it holds depends on the studs, the wall material, the anchors and the bracket rating, and a failure can happen weeks after the crew has left. For liability reasons we do not mount TVs on walls, ever, including on repeat jobs and for small TVs. We do plug it in, connect the cables you had connected before, and place it on the stand, dresser or console you choose. Book the installer for a day after the move and the TV will be waiting safely on its stand.

1. You show the foreman which TVs are coming and which mounts are staying.
2. The TV is lifted off the bracket by two people.
3. It goes face-in to a TV box with its stand and remote bagged and taped to the box.
4. On the truck it rides upright, strapped, away from anything that can lean on the screen.
5. At the new home it is unboxed, set on its stand and connected.

Before the crew arrives, photograph the back of the TV and any sound bar or streaming box so you remember which cable went where. Unplug game consoles and routers and pack them in their own box. Keep remotes in a zip bag. If the screen is a curved or very large panel, mention its size in your quote request so we bring the right box. For the rest of the home, see furniture disassembly and reassembly and packing services.