How to plan a laundry room

The right laundry room setup can bring a smile to your face every time you handle laundry chores. 

When planned with care, an efficient laundry room is an asset that will be invaluable to your home. 

Read on to find some useful tips on how to plan an ideal laundry room.

Where should a laundry room be located?

The first step in planning out a laundry room is to decide where it will be located. A common choice is in the basement, to keep the noise from laundry machines away from the main living areas. 

However, this may not be the most convenient choice since many people prefer to have laundry rooms in the main part of the house for easy access.

Ideally, a laundry room should not be too far away from living areas such as the kitchen and the bathroom. This would make it inconvenient and would add more work to any laundry chores.

Many designers recommend that laundry rooms should be near the bedrooms since that is where most of the laundry and linen live – in dressers and drawers. This reduces the work involved when hauling laundry across the house, and when returning clean clothes and linen to their rightful place.

Remember that you need enough light to be able to see your clothes well while cleaning them. Therefore, a laundry room would be best suited to a part of the home that is adjacent to the outdoors, thus letting in a flood of natural light. 

This is likely to reduce your reliance on artificial lighting, thus reducing the general energy use within the home over a long period.

Laundry Room Layout Options

Source

A similarly important factor in planning a laundry room is the layout. This refers to the orientation of the available space and what layout best fits laundry chores.

Designers recommend L-shaped and U-shaped laundry rooms which provide a variety of options, particularly relating to the placement of washing appliances and storage spaces.

An L-shaped laundry room allows washing appliances to be stacked on top of one another. It Leaves  a wide space where storage compartments and a work counter can be mounted 

A U-shaped laundry room provides a enough space for a large selection of cabinets and countertops that span the entire length of the walls, thus providing more usable surfaces and compartments. 

A U-shaped laundry room is best suited with a clothes folding table in the middle of the space, while an L-shaped laundry room is best served with a straight countertop attached to one of the longer walls.

Dedicated Laundry Room

There are benefits and drawbacks to having a dedicated space for laundry chores. Some of the benefits include:

• more space to clean clothes and other items, 
• drainage systems, and 
• the ability to use vertical spaces effectively for storage. 

A dedicated laundry room is also better placed in relation to the rest of the house since it has been planned with laundry in mind and is better optimized in terms of plumbing and electrical outlets.

Mixed function spaces

On the other hand, there are similar concerns when mixing a laundry space with other spaces in the house like a mudroom or basement. The biggest concern when repurposing spaces to combine their functions with laundry chores is the utilities.

Any space that will be used to do laundry requires:

• plumbing and electrical outlets to serve the washing appliances, 
• enough storage to keep cleaning supplies, and 
• enough lighting to make it easy to see dirt and stains when cleaning clothes and linen.

Some of the spaces in the house that can double up as a laundry room include:

•  the mudroom, 
• the basement, 
• under the stairs, and 
• storage closets. 

These have to be retrofitted with plumbing, electrical outlets, and storage compartments to serve the laundry chores. 

Basements are a popular choice because there is enough space to accommodate washing appliances, storage, and easy access to plumbing.

Mudrooms are a similarly attractive choice because they: 

• prevent dirt from being tracked to other parts of the house, 
• provide easy access to shoes, coats, and other items that need to be washed, and 
• often have some space that ends up being seldom used.

When mixing spaces ensure that you choose a washing machine and dryer that fit the available space. A good idea is to get front-loading machines that can be fitted under a counter so that you do not have any wasted space. 

Alternatively, you can get stackable appliances that can be fitted into a cupboard or a recessed corner.

Remember that when you combine the laundry room with another space, you will need to ventilate the door to allow heat from the dryer to dissipate with ease. 

Poor ventilation creates the potential for water stains and mold. 

Another option is to install vents that run through the wall to the outdoors, and ceiling fans to eliminate the need to open windows that lets in cold air.

A similarly innovative space-saving idea is to get a combined washer/dryer, which means that you only need to find the space for one appliance instead of two.

In a laundry and bathroom combination, you will need lockable storage to accommodate toiletries, cleaning supplies, and other clothes-care items that need to remain dry.

Plan to Maximize Storage

source 

A good laundry room requires enough storage to keep cleaning supplies and clean linen. Consider vertical storage options, large drawers onto which you can attach hooks, and an overhead hanging rail that can hold many different items to dry. 

You can also find a slim rolling laundry cart to occupy the seldom-used space between your washer and dryer. These carts are large enough to store all cleaning supplies and other essentials needed for laundry.

Another hardworking storage design involves mounting open shelves on the walls. This will make better use of surfaces that often go unused, and adds immeasurable value to the storage of small to medium-sized items in your laundry room.

Conclusion

A well-thought-out laundry room could make the difference in your chores, rendering them that much easier to perform in good time. Remember that the location of the laundry room in your home affects key factors such as lighting, utilities, and efficiency.

Do your best to plan the room out carefully to ensure the appearance matches the intended functions, and ensure you have plenty of storage to accommodate everything you need to do your laundry chores effectively.