Student Removals From Cardiff to Home

The date that matters is the one on your contract, not the day your last exam finishes. Cardiff University's spring exam period ends on 18 June 2027, but 39 week contracts run to 21 June and 40 week contracts to 30 June, and healthcare courses run into July and August.

That gap is useful. If your exams finish on the 18th and your contract runs to the 30th, you have twelve days to move at a time of your choosing rather than on the single busiest weekend of the Cardiff year. Book early in that window and the whole thing is calmer. Every date is listed on the university's contract periods page.

A year of student life does not fit in a car. Bedding, kitchen kit, books, a desk lamp, a drying rack, clothes for two seasons and whatever furniture you bought second hand add up to more than a boot, and the usual answer is several trips or several cars.

A van does it in one run, with the load strapped rather than stacked on a back seat, and the price agreed before we start rather than counted in fuel and motorway hours afterwards. If housemates are heading the same way, one van and a shared cost beats two separate journeys.

Long runs out of Cardiff are priced on the load plus the mileage, because the van comes back empty. The routes we do most often have their own pages with figures by size of load: Cardiff to London, Cardiff to Bristol, Cardiff to Birmingham, Cardiff to Manchester, Cardiff to Swansea, Cardiff to Newport and Cardiff to Bath.

Anywhere else in the UK is quoted directly on the same basis. Send both postcodes and a rough list, and the figure we give you is fixed before the van is loaded.

Not everything is worth a seat in the van. Bedding and kitchen kit that cost little new are often better donated than driven 200 miles, and anything you will want again in September is better in storage here than in a loft at home.

Cardiff Council's move out campaign and the charity collection points in halls exist for exactly this, and our end of term student removals page covers where things go. If you are coming back to Cardiff, student storage moves is usually cheaper than moving the same boxes twice.

Graduation sits after the contracts end. Cardiff University's ceremonies in 2026 ran from 13 to 17 July, and the 2027 dates are not published yet, but the pattern is mid July, weeks after the rooms have been handed back.

So plan the move as a move, not as a trip that ends at graduation. Most students move everything home first and come back for the day itself with an overnight bag. The university publishes each year's ceremonies on its graduation dates page.

Within Cardiff, a room's worth of boxes and a few bits usually lands between £85 to £150 and a full room of furniture between £130 to £220. A run out of the city is priced on the load plus the mileage rather than by the hour, and the route pages above carry indicative figures by size of load.

Booking earlier in your contract window is the single cheapest thing you can do, because the last weekend of June is the one everybody wants. The full breakdown is on our prices page.