The Cost to Move a 1 Bedroom Apartment, and What Each Extra Room Adds

Priced by the hour, the cost to move a 1 bedroom apartment is the crew rate multiplied by the hours it takes. The size of your home reaches that bill through the hours, and through nothing else. A studio, a one-bedroom and a three-bedroom are not three separate prices. They are three lengths of day, worked by crews of different sizes, and they differ far less at 8am than they do by mid-afternoon. This page takes the three sizes in order, from the fixed hours everybody pays for to the rooms that only a house has. For a figure built on your own rooms rather than your bedroom count, call (818) 391-8215.

Sealed and ready: tell us what moves

Get a quote (818) 391-8215

BySandy UaliOwner

October 5, 2026

Paper-craft illustration of three folded kraft paper homes in rising sizes, each with its own small stack of paper cartons beside the door.

At a glance

Home size buys hours rather than a different rate. We size the crew to your home and put the figure in a free written estimate that caps your bill.
Setup, disassembly, driving and placement happen at every size. On a studio they account for a large share of the working day.
An additional mover earns its rate wherever there is somewhere for a third person to walk, which in a one-bedroom with a single hallway is frequently nowhere.
A three-bedroom house adds rooms that an apartment never had, and the garage, the dining room and the patio are where those additional hours are hiding.
How finished your packing is on the morning changes how long the day runs, considerably more than your bedroom count does.
The written estimate caps your bill. The home we hear described at quote time is the home your price gets built from.

Home size reaches your bill through hours

Home size reaches your bill through hours, and bedroom labels do not step evenly enough to budget from. The Energy Information Administration's 2020 table of average home sizes puts the average one-bedroom at 791 square feet. Two bedrooms averages 1,274, and three bedrooms averages 1,917. The climb from two bedrooms to three is steeper than the climb from one to two, which is the reverse of the way most households plan for it.

Square footage is still only a stand-in for the thing being carried. Furniture and sealed cartons are what fill a truck, so two apartments of identical size can finish half a day apart.

An article list is the room-by-room count of large items a quote gets priced from, and it beats a bedroom label every time. Two things then decide how long that list takes to move. One is the walk between the tailgate and your front door, which every carton crosses twice. The other is how much of the packing is already finished.

The studio: setup costs what everyone else's does

Setup on a studio costs what setup costs on a house. The walkthrough, the floor runners at both doors, the shields on the frames and the ramp coming down take roughly the same half hour at either address. Add the drive between them, and a small home spends a large share of its day on work that never knew how much you owned.

The lever on a studio is therefore access rather than volume. Consider two studios in the same Long Beach building, holding identical furniture. One sits on the ground floor beside the loading door. The other is four floors up at the far end of a corridor, and it is comfortably the longer day on an identical article list.

Placement is the closing phase of the day, when furniture goes where you point and the beds go back together. It happens in a studio exactly as it happens in a house. A walk-up building with no elevator stretches the middle of the day as well, because every carton travels down a stairwell, and older blocks in Long Beach, Glendale and central Los Angeles are full of them.

Two movers suit almost every studio. Spend your own effort on the elevator booking, the curb outside, and having everything sealed and stacked in a single spot by 8am. Our apartment moving page covers the building side of that arrangement.

The cost to move a 1 bedroom apartment, and when a third mover pays for itself

In a one-bedroom, crew size decides more of the total than anything else. Two movers cover most of them comfortably. A third mover earns its place wherever carrying is genuinely the bottleneck: think of a third-floor walk-up, a courtyard building where the truck stops around the corner, or a unit at the far end of a garage podium. Ask us to price the job at both crew sizes and compare the totals.

Plenty of one-bedrooms have none of those conditions. A single hallway, a single elevator and a single doorway leave the third person queuing behind the other two, and packing the truck never divides between helpers anyway. Somebody has to stand inside the box building the load tightly, and that job belongs to one person whichever crew size you book.

Have each company price your particular apartment at two crew sizes, then set the totals beside each other. An hourly figure alone cannot tell you which of the two days finishes cheaper. You can also ask us for one flat figure instead of an hourly rate. Our local moving page describes what arrives with the crew, and the structure underneath the rate is explained on the moving costs page.

The two-bedroom: the day stops fitting into a morning

A two-bedroom is the size at which the day stops fitting into a morning. The second bedroom is rarely a bedroom. It is an office, a nursery, or the room where everything without a home ends up, and it is the room people leave out of the description they send us.

Ask us to price a two-bedroom at two movers and at three, then compare the totals, because the carrying and the loading run simultaneously. The kitchen decides the remainder. That room is the slowest in any household to pack, and the one most often half-finished at 8am. A half-packed kitchen turns a crew into spectators, and it is your day the waiting comes out of. The written estimate still caps the bill.

Two rules protect real furniture at this size. Light clothing can travel inside a solid wood dresser on a local move. Anything built from particle board should be emptied first, because a loaded flat-pack frame flexes apart the moment it is lifted.

Condominiums add a second layer of scheduling. Buildings in Irvine and other planned communities want a gate code, a reserved elevator, and occasionally a move-in window that closes at 5pm. Ask the office about all three at least two weeks ahead. For counting the cartons themselves, our guide to what it takes to pack a home measures the job properly.

The three-bedroom: the rooms an apartment never had

A three-bedroom house does not simply add two bedrooms to an apartment. It adds rooms that an apartment never had, and the garage, the dining room and the patio are where the hours actually accumulate. A single dining room can hold a buffet, a china cabinet, a table and six chairs, none of which travels unwrapped.

Disassembly is the phase where bed frames, table legs, wall brackets and mirror mounts come off, and it happens before the heavy furniture reaches the truck. On a full house that phase runs long. A fourth mover lets one pair of hands strip furniture while the others keep loading, which shortens the day. Ask for the job priced at both crew sizes and compare the totals.

The garage carries a problem entirely of its own. We cannot load paint, gasoline, propane or pool chemicals, and nobody enjoys discovering that particular rule at 8am. Los Angeles County operates household hazardous waste collection for exactly this situation, and Orange County operates its own centers. Clear the garage early, well before anything else gets packed.

Appliances deserve a little planning as well. A refrigerator travels empty and defrosted, and afterwards it stands upright for several hours before you reconnect it. If it traveled on its side, it stands longer, and the manual for your particular model publishes the number.

Detached houses across Torrance, Downey and Norwalk are mostly driveway moves, which is the straightforward version of a large day. Hillside streets in Glendale and the older parts of Los Angeles are not, and that difference is worth a sentence whenever you ask somebody for a price. Packing an entire house is a project in itself, and our packing services run on the same clock as the move, inside the same capped figure.

A run-up sized to your home

The run-up to move day scales with home size, and the packing is the part that scales hardest of all. A studio is genuinely one weekend of work, and a one-bedroom is two. A two-bedroom takes two or three weeks of evenings. A three-bedroom house takes a month, with the garage started first, because it takes the longest and gets left the latest.

Three errands are identical at every size, and each of them carries a lead time you do not control.

Ask your building about the elevator booking and the certificate of insurance the office expects, because both are routine requests that take days rather than minutes.
Some cities want a permit for the truck and most do not. Telephone your city's parking desk, or send us the address and we will check it while we prepare your quote. Pasadena publishes a moving vehicle permit application, for example, while several of its neighbors publish nothing whatsoever.
Change your address with USPS roughly two weeks out, and read the street sweeping signs at both curbs while you are standing outside.

Then finish with the free one. Stack every sealed carton in a single spot near the door the evening before, whatever size home you are leaving. Nothing else available without spending money saves as many minutes.

Get a figure built on your own rooms

The figure worth having is built on your actual rooms rather than on your bedroom count. The written estimate is the number we put in writing before your date, and your final bill cannot pass it. That is why we ask about stairs, walks and the contents of the garage before the figure goes out instead of afterwards.

Send us a room-by-room list of the large items, a rough carton count, and the access at both addresses. Call (818) 391-8215 or tell us about the move, and the figure comes back in writing. There is no deposit on standard bookings; same-day and last-minute bookings may require one, confirmed with your quote.

AG Moving&Storage is a family-owned company that has worked across Los Angeles and Orange County since 2021, licensed as USDOT 3610341 · CAL-T192465 · CA 602741 · MC 1525501. Anything else you want to know about us, ask on the telephone.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to move a 1 bedroom apartment in Los Angeles?

Two numbers make the total when you price it hourly: the crew rate, and the number of hours your particular home takes. We build both into a free written estimate, sized to your apartment and the access at both ends. The hours come from the stairs, the walk from the truck, and how much of your packing is finished before anybody arrives. Whatever they add up to, the written estimate caps what you actually pay.

How long does it take to move a one-bedroom apartment?

Half a day is the usual shape when everything is boxed and stacked before the crew arrives. A third-floor walk-up, a long carry from the curb, or a kitchen still sitting in its cupboards pushes it past that. The biggest variable is not the furniture at all; it is how finished the packing is at 8am.

Is a studio cheaper to move than a one-bedroom?

A little, and considerably less than the labels suggest. Setup at both doors, the drive between them and the placement at the far end happen at every size, so the smallest jobs carry the largest share of work that never shrinks. A studio up a stairwell can comfortably outlast a one-bedroom on a driveway.

Do I need 2 or 3 movers for a two-bedroom?

Ask for the job priced at both crew sizes and compare the totals rather than the hourly figures, because carrying and loading then happen at the same time. In a home with one narrow hallway and no elevator, the third person has less room to be useful.

How much more does a 3 bedroom house cost to move than a 2 bedroom?

More than the extra bedroom suggests, because a house includes rooms an apartment never had. The garage, the dining room, the patio and the shed are usually where the additional hours are hiding, not the third bedroom. Send a room-by-room list instead of a bedroom count and the estimate will match the day.