How to Purchase from Crate and Barrel When It Won’t Ship to Your Country
You filled your cart with a linen duvet cover and a stack of mixing bowls, hit checkout, and got the wall: “We don’t ship to your country.” Here’s how you purchase from Crate and Barrel anyway and get the box delivered to your door, wherever you live.
That message isn’t a glitch. In the last couple of years Crate and Barrel quietly stopped shipping housewares overseas through its old global checkout. So the kitchen, bath, and bedding items most international shoppers want are the exact ones the site now blocks at the border.
The workaround is simpler than it looks. Stick with me.
Why Crate and Barrel won’t ship your duvet cover abroad
Let’s name the problem precisely, because the vague version sends people in circles.
Crate and Barrel used to offer international delivery on small home goods through a partner called Borderfree. That option is gone. Their own help pages now state they’ve discontinued international shipping of houseware items, which covers nearly everything in kitchen, bath, and bedding.
Three facts you need before you buy anything:
- Does it ship internationally direct? No, not for housewares. Direct overseas shipping is limited to furniture orders totaling $5,000+ USD, quoted by request.
- Does it take non-U.S. cards? The U.S. checkout lists Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, PayPal, and Apple Pay. But the billing step expects a U.S. card profile, so cards issued abroad often get declined at the final click.
- What still works? Shipping to a U.S. address. Crate and Barrel will send any housewares order to a freight forwarder’s address with no special approval — their own FAQ confirms it.
That last line is the whole game. The site doesn’t care that you live in Lisbon or Sydney. It cares that the delivery address is in the U.S.
So the question stops being “will they ship to me” and becomes “how do I get a U.S. address.” We’ll fix that in a minute. First, what’s worth buying.
Three Crate and Barrel categories worth shipping home
Crate and Barrel sells furniture too, but couches don’t travel well across an ocean. The sweet spot for forwarding is small, dense, and high-value-per-pound. That’s kitchen, bath, and bedding.
Small kitchen items
This is the category that pays for itself. Crate and Barrel stocks brands that are hard to find or heavily marked up abroad: All-Clad, Le Creuset, Breville, KitchenAid, Cuisinart, Zwilling.
A concrete example: a stainless mixing bowl set runs about $115 USD, and drops near $92 on sale. Clearance bowls land at $20–$23 versus $35–$45 regular. These are small, nest together, and weigh little — ideal for forwarding.
💡 Tip: Brands like All-Clad and Le Creuset cost far more once they cross a border through local distributors. Buying the U.S. version and forwarding it often beats the in-country price even after shipping.
The honest drawback: glass and stoneware break. Pack a bowl set badly and you’ll open a box of shards. A forwarder that repacks fragile goods earns its fee here.
Bath
Towels, mats, and accessories are bulkier per dollar, so they’re a secondary buy — best added to a box you’re already sending. Crate and Barrel’s textiles carry OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 certification, which matters if you’re sensitive to dyes and finishes.
The drawback is weight-to-value. A towel set is light on price but takes up volume, which can nudge you into dimensional-weight pricing. Pair bath items with denser goods to balance the box.
Bedding
Bedding is where the sales get interesting. Duvet covers list at $170–$320 USD and routinely drop to $136–$256, with clearance pieces from $80. The Aire European Flax linen line is a frequent target.
One real catch: U.S. bedding sizes don’t match the rest of the world. A U.S. King is not a UK or EU King. Measure your mattress and match dimensions, not size names, or your gorgeous duvet won’t fit.
You now know what to buy and why the site blocks you. The other half is getting a U.S. address that actually accepts the box.
The U.S. address workaround, step by step
Here’s the part that turns “blocked” into “delivered.”
Planet Express gives you real U.S. street addresses. You shop Crate and Barrel as if you lived there, enter that address at checkout, and the order ships domestically inside the U.S. with no friction.
Then your we take over:
- Your box arrives at our U.S. warehouse.
- We log it to your account and hold it.
- You tell fill in the customs declaration and tell us where in the world to send it.
- We ship it to your door.
This is also how you take advantage of sales that international shoppers normally miss. Crate and Barrel runs frequent markdowns — “up to 35–40% off top kitchen brands,” seasonal clearance, Black Friday codes. Stack a sale price against a forwarded box and the math gets very friendly.
💡 Tip: Buy several sale items across a week, let them pile up at the warehouse, then ship them home in one consolidated box. One international shipment beats five.
Ready to see the numbers for your own cart?
Check what your Crate and Barrel order would cost to ship home →
But there’s still that card problem we flagged earlier. What if your payment gets declined before any of this can happen?
When your card gets declined: the Shop for Me fix
Lena in Sydney found the duvet cover she’d wanted for months — the linen one, marked down to $136. She entered her U.S. forwarding address. She hit pay.
Declined. Her Australian card tripped the billing check.
This is the most common wall after the shipping one, and it has a clean answer: a Shop for Me (assisted purchase) service. You send the product link and the amount; we buy the items with a U.S. payment method, receives it at the warehouse, and ship it to you with everything else.
It solves three things at once: declined cards, U.S.-only promo codes, and items some retailers refuse to sell to forwarders.
FAQ
Only in narrow cases. Housewares — kitchen, bath, bedding — no longer ship overseas directly. Furniture orders over $5,000 USD can be quoted for international freight, and Canada is served through the Canadian site. For everything else, you need a U.S. address.
Yes. Crate & Barrel ships housewares to U.S. forwarder addresses without any special approval. You enter the forwarder’s address at checkout like a normal U.S. delivery, and they relay the box to your country.
The checkout expects a U.S. billing profile, so cards issued outside the U.S. often fail at the payment step even when the card itself is valid. A Shop for Me service sidesteps this by buying the item for you with a U.S. method.
Shop the sale on the U.S. site using your forwarding address, then consolidate several sale buys into one shipment. U.S.-only promo codes that reject foreign cards can be applied through an assisted purchase. More on the Shop for Me overview.
A CRU (Customer Replaceable Unit) is a part you can install yourself, usually with instructions. A FRU (Field Replaceable Unit) ships without documentation and is often meant for a technician. Both are genuine Lenovo service parts.
Often yes — especially for All-Clad, Le Creuset, and other brands marked up by local distributors. Compare the U.S. sale price plus forwarding against your in-country retail price. On premium kitchen goods the U.S. route frequently wins; on heavy, low-value items it may not.