White glove delivery: two-person crews, surveyed access, placement in the room of use, assembly where required and all packaging removed. Not the same as room of choice.
Continuum Green delivers high-value and sensitive items across the UK to a full white glove standard. Two-person crews, surveyed access, placement in the room of use, assembly or installation where required, and removal of all packaging before we leave.
White glove delivery means the item arrives where it will actually be used, ready to use, with nothing left for the recipient to deal with. It is defined by what happens after the vehicle arrives rather than by how the item travelled.
Standard freight ends at the point the goods leave the vehicle. A pallet is lowered, a signature is taken, and the driver leaves. Everything after that, unpacking, carrying, positioning, assembling, and disposing of packaging, is the recipient’s problem. For a pallet of stationery that is fine. For a five-thousand-pound imaging device or a boardroom table, it is not.
The other defining feature is that the delivery is planned rather than routed. A white glove job is surveyed: access is checked, the route through the building is confirmed, protection is arranged, and a time is booked with whoever needs to be present.
That planning is the reason the service costs more, and it is also the reason it succeeds. The overwhelming majority of failed high-value deliveries are access failures that a survey would have caught, not handling failures in transit.
The phrase is used loosely, and quotes described as white glove frequently are not. These are the recognised tiers, and it is worth confirming in writing which one you are buying.
| Tier | Where the item ends up | What is left for you |
|---|---|---|
| Kerbside | Unloaded at the roadside or delivery bay. | Everything. Getting it inside is entirely your problem. |
| Threshold | Inside the first accessible doorway, typically the ground floor entrance. | Moving it to where it is needed, unpacking, assembly, and packaging disposal. |
| Room of choice | Carried to the specified room, still packaged. | Unpacking, assembly, and disposing of a substantial amount of packaging. |
| Full white glove | Positioned in the room of use, unpacked, assembled or installed, and checked. | Nothing. Packaging leaves with the crew. |
The gap between room of choice and full white glove is where most disappointment happens. If assembly, installation, or packaging removal matters to you, name them specifically in the scope rather than relying on the label.
Your items are handled carefully at every stage, from collection and loading through to transport, unloading and final placement.
We help your business avoid unnecessary damage, delays and confusion by planning the details before the delivery takes place.
Some items are unsuited to general freight regardless of how carefully they are packed, because the risk is not in the transit but in the handling at either end.
Typical white glove consignments include artwork and antiques, laboratory and diagnostic equipment, audiovisual and broadcast hardware, server and network equipment going to a live environment, executive and boardroom furniture, retail fixtures and display units, and specialist items such as musical instruments and safes.
What these share is that replacement is slow, expensive, or impossible, and that installation is part of the delivery rather than a separate visit. A general courier network is optimised for volume and throughput, which is precisely the wrong optimisation for an item that needs two people, a surveyed route, and forty minutes at the destination.
The other shared feature is that the recipient is often a client of yours rather than a colleague. In those cases the delivery is the last physical interaction with your brand, and a crew that leaves flat-pack debris in a reception area undoes a considerable amount of goodwill.
Our team can place items into the correct rooms, support basic positioning and keep the delivery process clean, organised and professional.
This is ideal for commercial furniture, office equipment, premium goods and business items that need careful handling on arrival.
Deliveries fail at buildings, not on roads. These are the things a survey checks and an unplanned delivery discovers the hard way.
| Check | Why it stops a delivery |
|---|---|
| Door widths and stairwell turns | An item that fits through a doorway may still not turn a half-landing. Diagonal clearance matters more than door width. |
| Lift dimensions and capacity | Internal dimensions and door height, not just weight rating. Long items frequently fail on lift door height. |
| Parking and unloading | Where there is no bay, a suspension may be needed in advance. Lead times are longest in central London. |
| Floor and lift protection | Managed buildings usually require protection in place before work starts and will refuse entry without it. |
| Booking windows and site presence | Someone must be present to accept and confirm placement. A delivery with nobody to receive it becomes a storage cost. |
| Assembly requirements | Whether installation needs specific tools, a second visit, or a manufacturer engineer rather than a delivery crew. |
White-glove delivery support for businesses that need careful handling, reliable timing and professional presentation.
We collect your items with care, checking access, handling needs and any important instructions before loading.
Items are handled with suitable protection to reduce the risk of marks, movement or unnecessary damage.
We plan delivery times around your business needs, site access and working hours wherever possible.
We place items into the correct rooms or areas so your team does not need to move them again.
We support offices, retail spaces, showrooms, warehouses and business premises across the UK.
Our team keeps you updated before and during the job, so the delivery stays organised and controlled
Insurance is where white glove quotes differ most and are compared least. Standard carrier liability is typically calculated by weight, which is close to meaningless for the items this service exists to move.
A crate weighing thirty kilograms might contain a monitor worth two hundred pounds or a piece of diagnostic equipment worth forty thousand. Weight-based liability treats them identically. For anything of genuine value, agree a declared value and confirm the cover in writing before despatch.
Ask specifically what is excluded. Cover often narrows or disappears for items packed by the sender rather than the carrier, for inherent defects, and for consequential loss, meaning the business impact of a delayed or damaged delivery rather than the item itself.
For irreplaceable items such as artwork and antiques, a specialist fine art policy is usually more appropriate than any carrier liability arrangement. We will say so rather than quietly accepting the risk on a standard basis.
White glove is a premium service and it is not always the right purchase.
If your item is robust, replaceable, and going somewhere with easy ground floor access, standard palletised freight will do the job for considerably less. Paying for a surveyed two-person delivery to move a flat-pack cabinet into an empty office is poor value and we will tell you so.
We do not provide high-volume consumer ecommerce delivery. This is a project and business-to-business service, not a parcel network with an upgraded label.
We do not install warrantied medical or laboratory equipment requiring manufacturer commissioning. We deliver and position it, and the manufacturer commissions it. Deliveries outside the UK are arranged through overseas partners: we coordinate the UK side and hand over, and they execute in country. Ask us to be specific about which parts we deliver directly before you rely on it.
Questions we are asked most often before booking.
Delivery where the item is placed in the room where it will be used, unpacked, assembled or installed if required, and all packaging removed by the crew. It is defined by what happens at the destination, not by the vehicle or the route.
No, and this is the most common misunderstanding. Room of choice carries the item to the right room but leaves it packaged and unassembled. Full white glove includes unpacking, assembly, and packaging removal.
For anything where access is uncertain or the item is high value, yes. Most failed deliveries are access problems that a survey identifies in advance, so the survey generally costs less than the failed attempt.
Against a declared value agreed before despatch rather than by weight. Confirm the figure and the exclusions in writing. For irreplaceable items a specialist policy is usually more appropriate than carrier liability.
Yes. Deliveries into offices, retail units, and client premises frequently need to happen before opening or after closing, and building access windows often require it.
Speak with Continuum Green today and let our team arrange a white-glove delivery service that protects your items and your business.
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