There is no lift. That is the first thing to settle. If you have just moved into a terrace, semi-D, or bungalow in Singapore and you are bracing for furniture delivery day, the HDB lift question does not apply to you, but that does not mean the path from the lorry to your bedroom is clear. Landed homes have their own set of chokepoints: a narrow front gate, a tight staircase landing, a decorative banister that eats into the width on every turn, or a master bedroom tucked away on level two or three. Miss any one of them, and a king-size bed frame stays in the garden until someone makes an awkward phone call.
This checklist works through every stage (from the moment you confirm your order to the hour the last piece is assembled) so delivery day is boring in the best possible way.
Quick answer: Measure your front gate, your front door, every internal doorway on the route to each room, and the usable width at every staircase turn. Most large furniture pieces need at least 80-90 cm of clear passage. Do this before you order, not after.
Stage 1: Before You Place the Order
Measure the path, not just the room
Most buyers measure the room, confirm the sofa fits against the wall, and click buy. The room measurement is the easy part. What matters more is whether the piece can travel from the lorry park outside to that wall. Walk the route yourself with a tape measure: front gate opening, front door frame (~0.9 m for a standard leaf, but older landed gates are often narrower), the corridor width from the entrance to the relevant room, every door frame along the way (~0.8 m is typical for internal doors), and the staircase if any room is above ground floor.
Account for the staircase turn, this is where most surprises happen
Here is the thing about landed homes specifically: a beautiful wrought-iron or timber banister on the staircase is one of the most common reasons a king-size bed frame cannot reach the master bedroom on level two. The turn radius at the landing, not the straight staircase width, is the real constraint. Measure the usable width at the tightest point of that turn, and then measure how long the largest box or panel of your furniture will be. A King bed frame at 182 cm wide is typically delivered in panels, but even single panels can be 170-180 cm long. Anything that cannot be tilted or rotated around that turn will not get upstairs without disassembly on-site, which takes time and ideally should be discussed with the delivery team in advance.
Check the product's packaged dimensions, not just its assembled ones
A sofa listed at 210 cm wide might arrive in one piece. Ask the retailer for packaged dimensions and whether the delivery team does on-site assembly or brings the piece fully assembled. For bedroom furniture going upstairs, this matters most: bed frames, wardrobes with full-length side panels, and tall display cabinets are the usual suspects. Wardrobes run ~58-60 cm deep and can be very tall; they almost always arrive in flat-pack panels for exactly this reason, and professional assembly on-site is how they get built in the room rather than downstairs.
Plan the route for every piece, room by room
Make a simple list: piece, destination floor, the three narrowest points on the route. If any measurement is tighter than the packaged dimension plus about 5-10 cm of handling clearance, flag it to the retailer before you confirm the order. It is a short conversation now versus a long, expensive one on delivery day.
Stage 2: The Week Before Delivery
Clear and protect the path
Landed homes often have tiled or marble floors, timber staircases, and plastered walls that dent. The week before delivery, move any furniture or décor that sits along the route. Roll up rugs. If there are wall-mounted lights or protruding switches at head height along the corridor, note them. Some homeowners lay cardboard or old blankets on the staircase treads; a good delivery team will bring their own floor protection, but having your own ready is sensible for heritage tiles or timber you care about.
Confirm the specifics with the delivery team
Call or message to confirm: the number of pieces, whether assembly is included, roughly how long it takes, and whether any piece requires more than two people to carry up the stairs. A king-size mattress (around 182 cm x 190 cm) is heavy and awkward on a staircase; it needs at least two people working together, sometimes three. For larger orders from living room furniture to full bedroom sets, knowing the team size ahead of time lets you clear the right spaces.
Measure one more time
Yes, again. Do it with the tape on the wall, not a mental recall. The staircase turn especially, measure the usable horizontal width with the banister in place, and then measure the diagonal clearance (height of the opening as well as width), since tilting a panel upright can sometimes get it around a tight corner that a flat carry cannot.
Stage 3: Morning of Delivery
Have the gate and front door open and unobstructed
Sounds obvious, but vehicles parked in the driveway, a gate that sticks, or a shoe rack placed just inside the front door have all caused delays. The delivery lorry needs to park close enough to carry pieces without a long walk; make sure the driveway or road directly in front is accessible. In a landed estate with a narrow access road, let neighbours know if the lorry will temporarily occupy part of the lane.
Have someone present who knows the house
The delivery team knows furniture; they do not know that the second step on the staircase creaks badly under load, or that the master bedroom door swings the other way. Have someone home who can answer questions about the route, the assembly location, and the order details. That person does not need to lift anything, but their presence prevents guesswork and speeds up the job.
Designate a staging area on the ground floor
For multi-level deliveries, agree in advance that all pieces go to a ground-floor staging area first, in order of size (largest first). The team can then work upstairs with the right piece at the right time rather than shuffling boxes in a narrow stairwell. This is especially useful for full-room orders like dining and outdoor furniture sets where multiple pieces arrive together.
Inspect each piece before it goes upstairs
Once a piece is assembled on level two, getting it back down for a return or exchange is the same logistical challenge in reverse. Do a quick surface check at the staging area: visible damage, missing components, wrong colour. Raise it before assembly if you can.
Stage 4: After Everything Is Inside
Check assembly and clearances in the room
Walk around every assembled piece. The usual clearances to check: roughly 60 cm on each side of the bed to move around freely, 70 cm at the foot; at least 70-90 cm as a main walkway through the room; about 30-45 cm between the coffee table and sofa. In landed homes, rooms are often larger than HDB, which is a relief, but upper floors can be tighter than the ground floor plan suggests, with staircase voids eating into the floor area.
Check that nothing was scraped on the way in
Walk the route back to the front door and look at the walls, door frames, banisters, and floor. Landed home staircases with timber handrails and plaster walls are more vulnerable to nicks than painted HDB corridors. Note anything and photograph it immediately, both for your own records and in case it needs to be raised with the delivery team before they leave.
If you only do three things from this entire checklist
Measure the tightest turn on your staircase before you order anything large. Confirm with the retailer whether bulky items arrive flat-packed or assembled. And designate a ground-floor staging area so the team is not improvising in a narrow corridor with a 2-metre panel. Those three steps prevent the vast majority of delivery-day problems in landed homes.
For anything else going into the home (study desks, bookshelves, display units) the same logic applies. Browse the full home furniture range and note the packaged dimensions for any large piece before confirming your order.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to worry about the lift if I live in a landed home?
No. Landed homes in Singapore have no shared lift, so the HDB lift clearance question does not apply. Your equivalent challenge is the staircase: specifically the turn at each landing and the width of the staircase opening. Measure the usable width at the tightest turning point, not just the straight run of the stairs.
What is the minimum door width a large sofa needs to pass through?
A standard internal door frame is approximately 0.8 m wide. A 3-seater sofa is typically 190-230 cm wide but is usually carried sideways or at an angle; the limiting dimension on entry is usually the depth of the sofa (around 55-65 cm) plus handling room. Still, confirm packaged dimensions with the retailer and check whether the sofa can be partially disassembled (reversible headrests, removable legs) for tight openings.
Can the delivery team disassemble a piece on-site if it won't fit upstairs?
This depends on the piece and the retailer's service terms. Some flat-pack furniture can be assembled room by room on upper floors with no issue. For fully assembled pieces, partial on-site disassembly may be possible but is not guaranteed. Raise the question before delivery day, not during it, so the team comes prepared with the right tools and enough time.
How early should I start measuring before my delivery date?
As soon as you know what you are ordering, ideally before you confirm the order. If you are ordering a bed frame, measure the staircase turn and door frames on the route to the bedroom the same day. Changes or exchanges made before dispatch are far simpler than those made after a delivery attempt.
What if a piece arrives damaged or does not fit?
Photograph the damage or the obstruction before the team leaves. Contact the retailer the same day. In Singapore, your rights under the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act and the general Lemon Law framework cover goods that are faulty or not as described; check the retailer's specific exchange and returns policy for the process and timeframe. Acting quickly and having photos makes the resolution much smoother.
One Last Thing Before Delivery Day
Most delivery problems in landed homes come down to one overlooked measurement taken too late. The staircase turn, not the room size, is where orders get stuck. Spend 15 minutes with a tape measure on the route before you place any large order, and delivery day becomes straightforward. Megafurniture's delivery team handles professional assembly on qualifying orders, and the showrooms at Joo Seng Road and Tampines are set up so you can see large pieces at actual scale before they come home with you.
Have a question about whether a specific piece will fit your layout? Call +65 6950-2657 (Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm) or email enquiry@megafurniture.sg, the team has navigated enough landed staircases to give you a straight answer.
A growing share of Megafurniture's furniture range is now produced in the company's own factories in Johor and Guangdong rather than sourced finished from third-party manufacturers. That arrangement removes a layer of cost and keeps quality control in one set of hands, from the production floor to your front gate, wherever that gate happens to be, and however narrow the staircase behind it.