Furnishing an empty Luxembourg apartment: what to buy, in what order

Unfurnished here often means genuinely empty. No wardrobes, sometimes bare ceiling fixtures, occasionally no kitchen appliances. Attempting to solve that in one weekend produces an expensive room assembled from a catalogue.

Confirm what is actually included, before you buy anything

Ask specifically at the viewing, and get it in writing: whether the kitchen includes an oven, hob, extractor, fridge and dishwasher; whether there is a washing machine connection and where; whether any wardrobes remain; and whether the light fittings stay. Each of these is several hundred euros and a delivery slot.

Where the property is furnished, a landlord may charge a legitimate rent supplement for the furniture on top of the capped rent, so ask for the furniture inventory before committing. It tells you what the supplement buys, and it becomes the list against which your rental guarantee is judged at the end.

The measurements to take before you order

Five numbers, taken with a tape measure at the viewing, prevent almost every furnishing mistake.

• Longest uninterrupted wall in each bedroom. A standard wardrobe needs about two metres. A room with a door, a window and a radiator may have no such wall.
• Living room wall for a sofa, about 2.2 metres plus clearance. Count the doors opening into the room, because each one removes a wall.
• Dining width, allowing roughly a metre behind each chair plus a circulation route.
• Lift car and stairwell. Internal width, depth and height of the car, the diagonal of its door, and the narrowest point of the stairs. This is the constraint people discover on moving day.
• Ceiling height. Luxembourg stock ranges from three metres in a townhouse conversion to considerably less in a 1970s block.

Where a hoist is needed because the lift will not take a sofa, and the facade faces a narrow street, a permit from the commune may be required. That is not a same-day arrangement.

Buy in three waves

Wave one, the first days. Beds and mattresses. One lamp per room. Cleaning materials, bin bags, light bulbs, a kettle, basic kitchen equipment, towels and bedding. A shower curtain or screen if none exists. Nothing that requires a decision.

Wave two, weeks two to six. Storage, ordered against measurements you have taken rather than estimated. Until clothes and possessions have a home, nothing else in the apartment can be assessed properly.

Wave three, month two onwards. Seating and the remaining lighting, chosen after several weeks of knowing which seat gets used in the evening and where the light falls. Dining and decorative pieces last of all.

Three or four light sources at different heights make a north-facing Luxembourg living room usable in February; a single ceiling fitting does not. Keep additions to plug-in fittings unless you have written consent for anything wired.

Where to look, and the option nobody advertises

Luxembourg's retail geography is concentrated: the large stores and shopping centres sit outside the historic centre, at Kirchberg, at Cloche d'Or and at Bertrange, with further hypermarkets in the southern communes. Cross-border shopping in Belgium, France and Germany is normal practice here rather than exotic, and it is how many residents handle bulk household goods and furniture.

Since 19 June 2026 the permitted opening windows have widened, with Monday to Friday running from 05:00 to 21:00 and Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from 05:00 to 19:00. Permitted is not the same as open, though: each business sets its own hours, and shopping centres are far more likely to use the extended window than independent shops. Check the specific store before travelling.

The option worth asking about directly: where the outgoing tenant is leaving Luxembourg, they frequently want to sell furniture rather than ship it, and a landlord holding a vacant flat has every reason to make the introduction. Ask the agent. It costs one question and regularly saves several thousand euros on a well-furnished apartment. Buy privately from the tenant so the pieces become yours, rather than letting them be added to the lease inventory where they can be charged against you at the exit inspection.

The arithmetic of furnishing against renting furnished

Furnishing an apartment to a decent standard from new realistically runs between €9,000 and €14,000. A furnished letting removes that outlay and replaces it with a monthly premium that repeats every year, so the crossover sits somewhere between eighteen and thirty months depending on how much you spend.

Two costs sit outside that comparison. Moving furniture out of the country at the end of an assignment runs into thousands and selling second-hand recovers a fraction. And in a furnished letting every item on the inventory is something that can be recorded as damaged at the exit inspection, which increases your exposure on a guarantee capped at two months' rent.

Three questions we are asked

Delivery to the door or to the kerb? Confirm at the point of order, because they are different services and the difference matters enormously on a fourth floor without a lift, which is common in converted Luxembourg townhouses.

Can I fix shelving to the walls? Read the lease, and remember that anything touching a load-bearing wall or the building's common systems needs the landlord's consent and frequently the co-ownership's. Photograph walls before and after: filling a picture hook costs a few euros before the exit inspection and appears at contractor rates afterwards.

What about the balcony? The facade is almost always common property even where the balcony is for your exclusive use, which rules out awnings, external units and fixings to railings in many buildings without the co-ownership's consent.

Appliances, and the connections that decide them

Before ordering anything that plugs into plumbing, establish three things. Where the washing machine connection is, and whether there is one at all, because in older converted buildings in Limpertsberg, the Gare district and Bonnevoie a connection inside the apartment cannot be assumed and the alternative may be a communal laundry area. Whether the kitchen has space and services for a dishwasher, or only the cabinetry that suggests one. And what type of hob connection exists, gas or electric, since replacing one with the other is not a tenant alteration.

Check the building rules before assuming a freezer or a second appliance can live in the cave, because both require a supply and both are commonly restricted.

Three questions we are asked

Is it worth shipping furniture from abroad? Beyond two or three years, usually yes for good pieces. For shorter assignments the cost of moving them out again frequently exceeds their value, and a furnished letting becomes the better arithmetic.

How long do deliveries take? Weeks rather than days on anything made to order. Book the delivery slot before you need the item, and confirm whether the retailer delivers to the floor or to the kerb.

What should I buy second-hand? Storage and dining furniture, which lose value quickly and are easy to assess in person. Buy mattresses new.

The kitchen list, which is longer than anyone expects

An empty Luxembourg kitchen needs more than most arrivals budget for, because the items are individually cheap and collectively substantial. Pans, a chopping board, knives, a colander, mixing bowls, storage containers, a corkscrew and a bottle opener, oven trays that fit the specific oven, cutlery, plates, glasses, mugs, tea towels, and bin bags in the size the building's bins take.

Two Luxembourg-specific notes. Water here is hard, so a kettle with a visible scale filter and a descaling product belong on the first list rather than the third. And check the bin sizes the commune's separated collection requires before buying anything to line them, since the sorting categories and container sizes are set locally.