Yes, almost always. Just not the day it lands. Give the piano 2 to 4 weeks in its new room, then book the tuner. The truck ride is rarely what moves the pitch. It’s the new room’s air, damp or dry, working on wood that holds every string under heavy tension.
Two to four weeks is the working window. Savvy Pianist says most technicians want the piano to sit that long before anyone touches the pins. It isn’t about the trip. It’s the time the wood needs to reach the moisture level of its new room.
The wider band you’ll see quoted runs two to eight weeks, about three on average, per Moving Help, and Living Pianos lands in the same place. Nobody argues about the floor, though. Don’t tune inside 24 hours of the move.
Book it too early and you pay twice. Savvy Pianist warns that tuning before a piano settles gives poor stability and often needs a second tuning soon after. Piano Forte Service, a technician on Vancouver Island, publishes $160 for a maintained piano at pitch that hasn’t been moved. Island prices, not Surrey prices, but a second visit adds up.
The Piano Technicians Guild explains why waiting works. Big humidity changes force big changes in string tension, which upsets the balance between the strings and the frame, and the piano never becomes stable.
Most people have this backwards. Living Pianos says the move itself is not what puts a piano out of tune. The climate of the room it lives in decides. Moving Help names the two real causes. Temperature and humidity.
Wood is why. It makes up about 85% of a piano, per In Tune Piano Supply, and it swells when it takes on moisture and shrinks when it dries. That property is called hygroscopy. Follow the chain. The soundboard is a sheet of wood roughly 3/8 of an inch thick, crowned slightly, per the Piano Technicians Guild. Damp air swells it, the crown expands, the bridge pushes harder into the strings, they stretch tighter, and the pitch rises. Dry air runs it backwards. The pinblock gripping the tuning pins is wood too, so pins loosen.
Yamaha says piano strings carry tremendous tension, averaging 90 kilograms each. The ride still counts for something. Jordan Porter of Fine Tuning, a working technician, says a jolted piano will go out of tune, and moving trucks often lack climate control. Small factor. The room is the big one.
Every serious source names the same indoor target. Steinway recommends 40% to 60% relative humidity and 68 to 78 degrees Fahrenheit. Yamaha calls 40 to 45 percent ideal. The Piano Technicians Guild sets its humidity systems to 42%. Torn Piano, a technician covering Surrey and the Lower Mainland, says the same in metric: 40 to 60 percent, 18 to 21 C.
Now the local number. Surrey’s outdoor humidity averages 70% across the year, peaking at 81% in January and bottoming to 61% in July, per weather-and-climate.com. Half the year the air outside sits well above what a piano wants, then the furnace runs and dries the house back down. That swing is the real problem. Not the truck ride.
So timing matters most on a fall or winter move, when the piano leaves one moisture level and lands in a heated house running much drier. Take the full 2 to 4 weeks and lean long. A July move between similar rooms is the mild version. Yamaha flags one more case: sudden temperature changes when a piano goes into an airtight room in a concrete building. A sealed tower unit with the heat cranked in November is exactly that.
Three cases come up over and over.
Moved it to another room at a similar temperature and humidity? Moving Help says you probably won’t need a tuning, and Living Pianos and Fine Tuning agree on room-to-room moves. The catch: a heated main floor and a cool basement are not the same climate.
Savvy Pianist says if the piano was due before the move, schedule it sooner, but expect a follow-up in a few months. You’re catching up, not waiting on stability.
Expect a pitch raise first. The strings have drifted so far below standard pitch, A-440, that the technician makes a rough pass across the instrument first, then tunes it properly. The Guild calls that a special tuning procedure designed to leave the piano approximately in tune. That one’s on the years without service, not the move.
Placement is the part you control. Steinway says keep a piano out of the path of sunlight, away from heating and cooling vents, and not beside a humidifier. In a Surrey house that means an inside wall, off the forced-air registers, out of the window sun, clear of the fireplace and the front-door draft.
Heated main floors run warm and dry all winter. Basement suites run cool and damp. Both sit outside the 40 to 60 percent band Torn Piano recommends, in opposite directions. Get it wrong and, as the Guild puts it, seasonal and even daily humidity changes swell and shrink the wood, costing you tuning stability and touch.
We move pianos. We don’t tune them. A registered piano technician does that part.
The handling and the landing spot are ours. The piano gets wrapped and strapped, it doesn’t sit in a cold truck longer than the job needs, and the legs, lyre and pedals go back on properly. Fine Tuning flags pedal reconnection as a common problem when untrained people move a piano.
Settling starts the moment the piano stops moving, so our Surrey piano moving crew sets it in the spot you picked, not the nearest open wall. Move it again next week and the clock starts over. Our own crews, no subcontractors.
Two to four weeks in most homes, and never inside 24 hours of the move. On the wet coast, take the long end after a fall or winter move.
Not by itself. Living Pianos is blunt: a move across a room, or even across town, isn’t going to necessarily knock a piano out of tune. What decides it is the temperature and humidity of the room it lands in.
Usually no, if both rooms sit at a similar temperature and humidity. Carrying it from a heated main floor down to a cool basement is a different climate, and that one does want a tuning once it settles.
A rough correction pass before a fine tune, for a piano that has drifted below standard pitch, A-440. Expect one if the piano hasn’t been serviced in years. That’s neglect catching up, not the move.
At least once a year, twice for better stability, per Torn Piano, a technician serving Surrey and the Lower Mainland. Steinway recommends no more than six months between tunings. A new piano needs two to four in its first year.
No. There are no strings holding tension, so nothing drifts. The question comes up because a digital upright looks like an acoustic one from across the room, and it still wants the same careful handling on move day.
Tell us where the piano is going and we’ll plan the carry, the doorways and the stairs before the truck rolls. You pick the spot. We set it there once.
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