For a spare room’s worth of belongings, usually yes, and often by a wide margin. On our September 2026 price lists, the middle price for a 25 sq ft unit, which holds the contents of a single spare room, came to about £1,000 a year, while the Office for National Statistics put the extra rent for a third bedroom at about £1,850 a year across England in August 2026, and more in much of the south.
When storage is the better buy
Storage works best when you’re short of room for things rather than room for people. If the box room is full of boxes, a spare bed and seasonal kit, a small unit can clear it, and you get a usable room back without moving house. It also suits a stage of life: downsizers sorting what goes to family, growing families who don’t need the extra bedroom just yet, and anyone waiting for the right house to come along.
If you own your home, the gap is wider still. Moving up from the average terraced house to the average semi-detached in England in mid-2026 meant more than £11,000 in one-off costs, from stamp duty and estate agent’s fees to conveyancing and removals, before any extra mortgage interest. At that middle price, a 25 sq ft unit could hold the overflow for around ten years for the same money.
When a bigger home makes more sense
We’d rather you made the right choice than the wrong one with us. If a child needs a bedroom of their own, storage can buy you time, but it can’t make a bedroom. And if you’d need a large unit, enough for a whole house of furniture, for several years, the yearly storage cost starts to come close to the extra rent for a bigger home in many areas, and the bigger home gives you a room to live in too.
How to work out your own sum
- Find the extra cost of the next size of home. Compare two rental listings near you, one with the extra bedroom and one without, or, if you own, add up your moving costs and any extra mortgage interest.
- Price the unit you’d need. Our room-by-room size guide helps you pick a size, and you can get a price online for your nearest site. Prices vary by site and change from time to time.
- Compare like with like. We charge every four weeks, which is 13 payments a year, so multiply our four-weekly price by 13 and a monthly rent by 12.
Storage also keeps you flexible: there’s no deposit for new customers, a two-week minimum, and you can leave with notice, normally 14 days, whenever your plans change.
If you’d like a hand working out the size you need, call us on 0800 2545585 or get a price online.
Related questions
- How much does it cost to store furniture?
- How can I keep my storage costs down?
- Is self storage worth it? An honest cost-benefit guide
Further reading