UK rates
| Service | Cost | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Standard UK delivery, orders under £500 | £14.95 | 3–5 working days |
| Standard UK delivery, orders £500 and over | Free | 3–5 working days |
| Large items — two-person delivery | £79 | 7–14 working days, booked with you |
International rates
We now ship worldwide. Risers, mounts, fixings, acrylic bonnets and small plinths go by tracked courier. Cases, vitrines, full-height plinths and display walls travel timber crated on freight.
| Destination | Courier items | Free over | Crated freight | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Europe, including Ireland, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland | £24.95 | £300 | £199 | 5–10 working days courier, 15–25 crated |
| United States and Canada | £39.95 | £500 | £449 | 6–12 working days courier, 8–12 weeks crated |
| United Arab Emirates and the Middle East | £49.95 | £600 | £499 | 7–14 working days courier, 8–12 weeks crated |
| Rest of the world | £59.95 | £700 | £549 | 8–18 working days courier, 10–16 weeks crated |
Free-over thresholds apply to courier items only. Crated freight is never free.
These are flat rates covering the great majority of orders. A multi-case installation or a display wall run will exceed them, and on those we will email you with the real crating and freight cost before taking payment. You can cancel for a full refund if it does not work for you, and we will never charge more than the rate you paid at checkout without asking first.
International delivery is kerbside. The two-person, into-the-room service is a United Kingdom service only. Outside Britain you will need somebody to receive a crate and a way to move it inside. For a museum, gallery or retail installation we would strongly suggest booking a local art handler for the last fifty metres — it is the cheapest insurance on the whole order.
Import duty and local tax
Orders shipped outside the United Kingdom do not include import duty or local sales tax. What you pay us covers the goods and the freight only. Your customs authority sets the charge, a carrier or broker collects it before delivery, and there is usually a brokerage fee on top. You are the importer of record.
If you are a museum, gallery, university or public collection, many countries give relief from import duty on display and conservation equipment for public exhibition, and several operate temporary admission relief for touring exhibitions. That relief is claimed by you, not by us, and it usually has to be arranged before the shipment arrives. Tell us at the point of ordering and we will supply whatever commercial documentation, valuations or certificates of origin your broker asks for.
Glass, acrylic and the honest risk of long-distance freight
Cases travel crated, on edge, with corner protection, and we photograph every crate before it leaves.
We will say plainly what we would want said to us: glass on a ten-week sea crossing is a different proposition from glass on a lorry to Manchester. Crates are handled more times, stacked, and exposed to heat and humidity swings. Our crating is built for it and the great majority arrive perfectly, but the risk is not zero and it is higher than a domestic delivery.
On long-haul orders we will often recommend acrylic rather than glass where the specification allows it. Acrylic is lighter, does not shatter, costs less to crate and less to replace. If you are ordering a case for shipment outside Europe, email us before you buy and we will tell you which material we would use. That conversation costs nothing and has saved several orders.
- Inspect the crate before you sign. If the outer packaging is damaged, sign for it as damaged — that one word protects you, and on international freight it is the difference between a paid claim and a rejected one.
- Unpack within 48 hours even if you aren't installing yet, and tell us within 7 days of anything broken or marked in transit. Photographs of the damage and of the crate resolve a claim in a day rather than a fortnight.
- Keep the crate until you're satisfied. If something has to go back, it needs to go back in the packaging it arrived in — and on an international order there is no realistic substitute for the original crate.
Acrylic arrives with protective film on both faces. Leave it on until the unit is in position — that film is what stops installation scratches.
Which items are two-person or crated?
Anything that one person should not lift, and anything that is expensive to get wrong: display cases and vitrines, full-height plinths, display walls, wall-system runs, plant staging, and complete display packages. The product page says so, and the charge appears at checkout — you will not be surprised by it afterwards.
UK two-person delivery is booked with you by telephone, in a time window, and includes carrying the item into the room of your choice on the ground floor, or one floor up where the stairs allow. It does not include installation, unpacking to a finished state, or removal of an existing unit unless that was agreed in writing.
Shopify charges one rate per shipping profile, so an order containing a case and a small acrylic riser is charged both the standard rate and the large-item rate — or, over £500 in the UK, the large-item rate alone.
Before your delivery: measure the route
This is the single most common cause of a failed delivery, and it is entirely preventable. A 1,200mm case does not go round a 900mm landing.
- Measure the narrowest point of the route, not the doorway. Usually it's a turn, not an opening.
- Measure diagonally on stairs and half-landings.
- Check the lift's internal depth and door height if you're above ground floor — lift doors are often lower than the car.
- Tell us about bollards, gravel, steps to the front door, or a loading restriction when you order, not when the driver calls.
- On an international order, add the crate dimensions, not the case dimensions. A crate is typically 100 to 150mm larger on every face.
If in doubt, send us the dimensions of the tightest point and we'll tell you whether it fits. If a delivery fails because the item could not be got into the building, we will do everything we can to help, but a redelivery is chargeable — and internationally it is very expensive.
Made-to-measure orders
Lead times for made-to-order work are on the Made to Measure page and run from 2 to 12 weeks depending on the item. Delivery of a made-to-measure order is arranged with you once the piece is finished, not at the point of ordering. Add international transit on top: a made-to-measure case crated to Australia is a four to seven month project from order to installed, and we would rather you planned for that than hoped.
Tracking and problems
You'll get a despatch email with tracking where the carrier provides it, and a phone call for UK two-person deliveries. International freight is tracked to the destination port and then by the local delivery agent, who will contact you to arrange a date. If a parcel hasn't arrived within 7 working days of despatch in the UK, or 20 internationally, email support@homartuk.com with your order number and we will chase it. Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 the goods are our responsibility until they reach you — a lost parcel is our problem to solve, not yours, and we apply that rule worldwide.
Trade and site deliveries
We deliver to sites, install contractors and third-party storage, in the United Kingdom and abroad. Call-off delivery against a single order, booked in phases, is available on trade accounts — see Trade Accounts. For an overseas institutional order we are happy to ship to your freight forwarder or art handler's UK depot instead, which is often cheaper and always better handled. Ask.
Contact
HOMART LIMITED
30 Uphall Road, Ilford, England, IG1 2JF, United Kingdom
Company number 15257354
support@homartuk.com · 07868 375682
Monday to Friday, 9am–5.30pm United Kingdom time