If you’ve ever bought yourself brand new items of furniture – like a sofa, a bed, or an armchair – then chances are you’ve met some polythene furniture covers in your time. If you’ve moved house, you might have used furniture bags, too. And for good reason; they’re the best way of protecting these big, heavy, but easily damaged items when they’re on the move.
And while polythene furniture covers might seem like simplistic solutions to a basic problem, a lot of thought and design goes into them to make sure they perform properly. Let’s cover all the different types of polythene furniture covers we supply, and their uses – with guidance on what gauge to use for different pieces of furniture.
All types of polythene furniture covers
One size fits all isn’t always the best strategy to use for furniture covers. For starters, it can be quite wasteful. That’s why we have a range of categories of polythene furniture covers, to make the process more cost effective, energy efficient, and offer the best level of protection.
Mattress bags
As you’d expect, mattress bags are intended to cover mattresses. Most modern mattresses are supplied rolled up and vacuum sealed – but others are packed fully open. Either way, mattress bags offer rolled or flat mattresses full protection in transit and storage. Using strong polythene blends at heavy duty gauges, these purpose made, gusseted bags protect mattresses from water, dust and dirt, whether in warehouse storage or on their way to customers.
Mattress bags can be made to fit all mattress sizes, and are convenient for manual or semi automated packing lines. We can even provide coloured mattress bags, for branding and printing.
Automated processes may benefit from using lay flat tubing instead – but we’ll get to that shortly.
Sofa bags
Sofa bags have to cover a huge, heavy item – often made with mixed materials. The combination of weight, size and notching hazards poses a challenge for any furniture cover. Polythene sofa bags are a great option, because of the strength that polythene demonstrates at higher gauges.
Our sofa bags are manufactured using a side weld for additional volume, and are normally supplied on a roll with tear off perforations for ease of use.
Chair bags
Like sofa bags, our polythene chair bags are made of a high strength polythene blend that has a high puncture resistance, to protect armchairs from cuts and abrasions. The only real difference is size, to reduce weight and waste – but custom gauges could be used for lighter items.
Polythene sheeting for furniture
In automated packaging processes on furniture production lines, polythene furniture sheeting is a better option. It’s versatile because the sheeting can form any size of furniture cover. This means that one material type can be used for an entire product range, as opposed to having individual cover types for each line.
Of course, this comes with the added investment cost of developing an automated process – so, polythene furniture sheeting is best suited to high output semi or fully automated packing processes. But it’s also useful for manufacturers with a range of items that vary in shape and size, with the means to pack and seal items individually.
Furniture bags are important in the logistics, transportation and warehousing chain of furniture makers – and are vital to delivering a quality product. So, what size and gauge should you be using?
What sizes and gauges should you use for polythene furniture bags?
The most important aspect to consider is the weight of the item you want to package. With furniture, this can be extreme, depending on the materials used. After weight, it’s size, followed by how “pointy” it is – an armchair usually has metal or wooden feet, for example; but a mattress isn’t going to pose much of a puncture risk.
We recommend using either super heavy duty or heavy duty polythene for heavy, footed furniture (like sofas and armchairs), because it’s dependable, reliable – and in many cases, reusable.
Mattress bags can be somewhere in the heavy duty range. Smaller, lighter items of furniture could be covered with lighter gauges, but this needs to be carefully considered when designing your packaging.
And what about size? Well, for oversize items, polythene sheeting is the best choice. It can be provided in widths up to 9.6 metres, and formed into custom covers on-site; you could also weld sheets into even larger sizes, if that’s what you’d need.
For everything outside of those extremes, you can order a readymade solution. And we’re here to help you get the exact furniture covers you need.
Order custom polythene furniture covers
Our polythene furniture covers and bags are made to your exact specifications, offering a perfect fit and exceptional protection performance. Get a quote now, or call us on 01773 820415 to start designing your own polythene packaging for the New Year.
