Ros yours is like ours . Except we have 4 doors so 2 cupboards on the linen side and an overhead over the trough as well as under . So it's a bit wider than yours

I spend more time in my laundry than I do my theatre room! I love having the space for dirty clothes hamper *nb family, please use this instead of floor. Also a bench top for sorting clean washing plus storing all relevant laundry baskets, buckets, mops etc. If you have the space in a largish house, a laundry is an essential. Apartment living is completely different - I have never done this so really can't comment. I would struggle without a proper laundry.

If you have space it's best to have a separate laundry room especially with access to the outdoors (Mud room) which can also have a shower and toilet, this is great for Tradie husbands and children. There was a time when we had a laundry in a cupboard, just need to make sure you can fit a normal clothes basket, (ironing boards brooms etc need their own cupboard. To help with this the kids all had a Freedom clothes basket on wheels in their rooms to take their dirty laundry and then sheets, these were wheeled to the laundry, the washing done and then refilled with the clean laundry to be wheeled back to their rooms. I gave up ironing things until they were actually needed this saved a lot of time with those that put things on for 5 mins and disgarded them back onto the floor or basket..

while doing my washing today i've paid extra attention to what it is about my laundry that i like and that includes...1. room on the floor to sort everything into piles 2 as well as room for the ironing board to be left standing up for the rare times it's used 3.hanging rod above the counter to hang newly washed drip dry clothes 4. a bench for folding clothes 5. a tub big enough to wash my little dog, with a pull out hose fitting on the tap 6. under bench storage for a dirty clothes basket 7. cupboards and shelves for mops and buckets and cleaning products behind doors 8. underbench power for wm and dryer 9. under bench taps for the washer and 9 a door to shut it all away from the public areas..So the main things i couldn't also have in a well designed cupboard laundry would be the ability to quickly shut the door on the standing ironing board and the washing spread out on the floor

How many hours a day do we spend washing and ironing etc etc????????????

TOOOOOOOOO many!!!

I think to make the job more enjoyable....a nice spacious light bright laundry would be a million bucks!!!

Plus it MUST be close to the kitchen!!

I've not had a full stand-alone laundry for 5yr. We've recently moved into our reno and I have a stacked laundry unit in my kitchen (euro laundry). I'm finding it works just fine. Saying this- I have 2 boys (9 & 11) and a husband, I work full-time. I've found since not having a full laundry past 5yr it pays to be disciplined about my washing. I do a small load daily. Washed, dried, put away (ironing necessary evil unfortunately!). I do remember my old full laundry......I'd often 'forget' the washing till it came back to bite me- "Mum where's my PE uniform?".

I had the choice between full laundry or 4th bedroom. Where we live, there is greater value on the 4th bedroom as so few places have them. It was not an option, and I've learned to manage it.

Great choice Mel N, you will survive the small laundry and make great use of the 4th bedroom

I have a tiny cupboard laundry in the 2nd bathroom, which has a door out to a deck - I'm able to have the tub in the garage if I need it. There's room for the ironing board and clothes airer beside the washing machine, and shelves above. There are

When we built our new home, I wanted a compact laundry. I strongly disliked the "wasted space" that laundries took up. Here in Queensland, Australia, we don't need wet rooms and places to put our boots (I am talking urban, not rural where to opposite would be true).
My laundry has two purposes. It hides the ugly machines, but is also one of the built in cupboards in my artroom, so is used as a wet area for rinsing paints, washing hands and getting water.
I love how I can put washing on and close the door. As for sorting the actual laundry, I sort it, put one of the piles in the washing machine and then put the rest in the sink or spare floor space around. I am still able to close the door.
I have a shelf above where I store laundry liquids, baskets, buckets, mops, mobile clothes airer and also spare art tables and canvases. I still have room to store my grandchildren's highchairs and would still have room above for another shelf for more storage if I want.

We did consider the problem of re-sale, but felt that we needed to have a house that worked for us, not others.

I think I'm realising laundry size preference, for some, comes down to habits. When I sort I sort onto the floor, put one load on to wash and the other two still separated back into the two dirty laundry baskets and plonk them back in their respective bathrooms until it's their turn. Having a spot to iron would be magic though! Current set up only has a double power point that's hard to get to and positioned well behind the stacked appliances.

@ the peach tree,

I can't agree that your photo shows bench space, really, a bench space for me would be a metre of otherwise unused bench.

If space is an issue then a compact laundry simply needs to be accepted and worked as best as possible but if you have a 3 - 4 bedroom home, capable of sustaining a large family, then a tiny laundry for the person keeping up with the washing would probably almost go nuts, as there isn't sufficient room to even hold the dirty laundry let alone the washing off the line and wheres the bench space to fold it??

Tiny home tiny laundry, large home large laundry and I think this is the same for a lounge, kitchen or even the bathroom, that if the home can sustain a large family, it would go against the grain to have small areas for such a family.

We are building our last home and have opted for the larger version of a 3 - 4 bedroom home and have a dedicated laundry with plenty of storage too, which living in the country includes an extra fridge and freezer, as the nearest town is 15 km and the nearest safeway/coles is 30km away, one way. My laundry is 2.5m x 4m and all the rooms in the house would sustain a large family.

@barbara I think if space wasn't such a premium in this build a lovely big laundry would be wonderful. We need to think carefully about every $ as this is our first home. Enjoy your build!

@thepeachtree,

I hear you about saving $$$, as the home we're building we're doing entirely ourselves, just hubby and I and we've been building for 9 years now with our own money and simply saving until we can move onto the next project but we didn't comprimise the size of the house either, just took longer being bigger but we have a comfortable little relocatable home to live in whilst we're building, so we're lucky that way.

Hope everything turns out ok for you too.

Cheers,

Barbara

Each of us have a colour coded tub. The clothes on the line goes straight on the sofa and into tubs .

could skip the sofa bit. I use it to fold my towels , sheets etc .

For the last 15 years I have lived with my laundry in the master bathroom. This bathroom is rarely used as we don't entertain visitors all that often so it's hardly an inconvenience. We are about to move into a new house, that has a room totally dedicated to the laundry and I cant wait !!

Its all very well to have these grand ideas of compact this and compact that but if you DONT have to ... don't.

There's nothing like being able to have a private somewhere to hang your undies when its raining, to spread that folding out and make his/hers piles of folded clothes, to have somewhere to wash the cat, somewhere to iron those annoying shirts (that you bought without thinking), not having to listen to the washing machine completing it's cycle, getting all stuffy because the dryer is going and did I mention that I am looking forward to spreading myself out on laundry days.

You wash your cat, Yvonne? I'm impressed!

I'm impressed too as ours used to scratch us when we washed him.

I've not washed the cat for over 10yr. Only ever did it once. He just stood in the tub giving me an evil voodoo death stare as I bathed him. It kind of freaked me out. He can wash himself now.

My washing stack is in the kitchen, so no dedicated laundry tub at all. I put a butler sink in the main bathroom for the very odd times I'd need a laundry tub.

My washer is going right now- behind the cabinetry- it is barely audible. It's a Siemens frontloader. It has a Siemens condenser heat pump dryer stacked on top. This dryer does not vent hot air OR moisture. I can also leave the cabinetry closed when it's running. I do leave a cabinet door open though as I'd forget when the cycle finishes it's so quiet. If you are considering locating your laundry cupboard in the kitchen or a hall, I'd suggest you look to european appliance manufacturers. Cupboard laundries are very much the 'norm' across Europe so they are designed for this in mind. I remember a Maytag I had in the last full laundry I had 5yr ago- so damn noisey, like a jet plane taking off and that wasn't even when it was spinning.

Go for it, bigreader! just have lots of bandages around, LOL.

Talking completely off topic about cats and bathing etc...I have an amazingly funny joke about "Giving a Cat a Pill", very well written, quite a laugh, if anyone wants it just let me know.

Incidentally, my beautiful siamese "Kitty" long since gone, got her first bath at 4 1/2 weeks of age after rescueing her from an old lady who thought the black dots on the kittens were pretty spots but were in fact 100's upon 100's of fleas!!!

Kitty accepted her bath time but just continued speaking through the entire episode including whilst being dried but never a bite or scratch, she was one of a kind!!

Hi Mel N. I'm glad that your happy with your laundry. I am about to move mine from the garage to the kitchen. Going outside, down a flight of steps isn't good in wet weather and certainly not good as I age. There is space at the end of the kitchen to put a Euro laundry. So I was pleased to hear about your quiet appliances. I will investigate them for my new laundry. At the moment I can't sort washing in the garage anyway, as it might get run over by the car! And all my cleaning equipment is already in the house, so that it is easier to access.

My cat loves a bath - he jumps in the bathtub with anyone who happens to be taking a bath!!

Our Euro Laundry is in the cupboard next to the fridge in this Villa, it has bifold doors, the cupboard also vents to the outside for when the dryer is being used and the doors are closed. Fisher & Paykel are very quite with the door closed.

We removed the Laundry tubs, and any soaking is done overnight in the washing machine, plastic buckets are great for smalls. Agree with Wuff dry clean clothes are put onto a bed and sorted, shirts etc are hung on coat hangers and put into the wardrobe, only ironing things when they are to be worn.

Having read some of the posts, I can see that the type of laundry one has or needs is very relevant to ones lifestyle and location. If you live in suburbia and have a uniform or casual clothes, then a laundry can perhaps be quite minimal BUT

If like me, you are someone who lives in the country AND has cattle, sheep etc...then the laundry takes on a whole new role, as the type of clothes that are being washed are so much dirtier and the things that come into the laundry can even be so "out there" like an orphan lamb in a box that is being rescued, a calf feeding bottle being washed out ready for the next feed etc... country life is soo soo different.

As I mentioned in an earlier email, I am having a fridge and freezer for extra storage including a charging station for torches, so necessary in farm life, so laundries in the country will always be different and bigger from those in suburbia.

Great ideas here. At the moment we have main bathroom with toilet en laundry all in the one space. I don't like guests to have to view my piles of dirty clothes. So we are about to change our lay- out. Bathroom with laundry cupboard and then a seperate access toilet. We will sacrifice an external door, but we don't use that door anyway. I'm slightly worried about small laundry, big house (3+ bedrooms), but it will work for our family and we'll worry about resale in 10 years.

I have already mentioned elsewhere that whilst building our forever dream home, we live in a matchbox size house all of approx. 7 sqs, a relocatable home and the bathroom is also the laundry and toilet. It is dreadful to traverse and to get to the toilet and shower, you have to turn sideways to pass the washing machine and carefully pass the hand basin and try not to hit the vanity corner with your hip.

When trying to dry yourself out of the shower, we have to be mindful of not hitting our elbows on the shower wall and lifting your leg to dry it is also done carefully so as not to hit the handbasin with your knee!!

We cannot change this layout but can't wait to get out either and enjoy the comfort of a large bathroom, seperate toilet and seperate laundry.

I would like to add that one should always stick to your guns when dealing with any renovation and renovation companies. Three companies told me that the toilet and cistern could not be moved from one side of the bathroom to the other or that it would be a huge problem with sewer lines outside the bathroom which would have to be dug up but I knew what I wanted and I knew it was feasible. I then found a Danish bathroom tiler called Jan who said that my idea was great and it could be done "no worries" which two words normally strike fear into my heart! I got the bathroom I wanted and although Jan was not cheap, he did a great job. As you can see from the first "snap", the old bathroom was a mishmash of styles and in dire need of replacement. Firstly, we wanted to get rid of the bath as we have just reached 70 and looking ahead, did not relish the thought of climbing into the bath to have a shower when we were geriatric. I would like to also add that while I designed the new bathroom myself, I got a whole lot of ideas from Houzz including the hidden LED lighting around the cabinet and the porcelain tiling on the walls and floor. Jan's employee who did the grouting suggested dark grouting but I wanted white to "lift" the tiles and to avoid a concrete bunker look. He was quite dubious about white grouting but after it was done, he said that it looked great. Again, stick to your plan!

totally agree with you Sheila, we have a Plumber that always says yes to doing things and no fuss . I think a lot only want to do things the easy way, good on you for sticking with it. Showers over baths can be extremely dangerous places for everyone.

I will start with an admission - I have read nothing of the comments. However I have helped a friend design a compact laundry. Here was how we did it.

1. Start with a list of everything - and I mean everything, include pegs, those little lint ball things for the washing machine, buckets, mops, vacuum, airers etc - that you want to store in the space.

2. Break that list into where you want to store it - drawers, wall, or cupboard - and then rewrite the list as cupboard, drawers, wall etc.As you are doing this, see if you can store those items elsewhere - we added a ceiling airer in the bathroom using pulleys. Also mark any item that a special storage gadget might help. We added to the back of one door (I think they were custom made 925mm and 2300mm high) a hanger for the vacuum hose, and in the cupboard a hanger that slides out for the brooms and mop.

3. Go measure the space you have, and be exact - if the measurement is 1457mm it is 1457mm. Also, see where you might "borrow" space from. We managed to add another 650mm deep, 750mm wide cupboard by swapping the two bedrooms around, and using space in the guest bedroom wardrobe.

4. Draw up a plan, and be really specific. If you think you need four drawers and a top mounted sink then plan that way. Whilst you are planning think over whether you want top spec and not hide it, or to hide it behind really nice doors. We used reasonable quality from Bunnings and modified because it was behind doors.

Also, don't be afraid to "borrow" something from a different zone. In my laundry I used a round kitchen sink, because I didn't want a really deep laundry tub so I could use the room underneath.

5. Go and find a really good quality cupboard manufacturer or builder and ask them to look over your plan and ideas. They may tweak to assist, but remember you know your space and what you will be using it for better than anyone. In my friends case, she had a brother who assisted and made a super looking set of doors.

As to resale value, that depends on who you want to buy it, but I have one piece of advice - don't go for the resale value, do it because that is what you want. In my friends case she turned her laundry into the bathroom, and then turned the oversized bathroom into a very natty study.

Good Luck.

my laundry is between the kitchen and garage. It is the perfect location. I think it acts like a "mud" room as well as a laundry. It is very small but all the dirty things happen there, cleaning shoes, organising pest spray and so on. Happy to have the noise barrier.

We had a closet laundry in the kitchen of our last house, thought that would be great until I had to use it now I won't consider a house with laundry in kitchen or garage (the garage option always looks like an afterthought and I bet functions like one to.

We now have a decent bench with basket drawers under for sorting washing, so when you go to put a load on its ready to go. Plus it's a great utility space for all sorts of jobs e.g. cleaning mucky shoes (or dying shoes etc). Plus shirts go straight onto hanger above bench in front of window - so easy.

If you have the space it's great to have a utility room, when we lived in Dubai we had an apartment with a laundry cupboard in the kitchen with housed an American coupled washer & dryer similar to the above which was a great sized unit, can't remember the brand, couldn't hang washing outdoors too easily in that climate. Shirts straight onto hangers in front of laundry window works really well if you have one.

I think that is absolutely perfect. More often or not these days, people are utilising smaller spaces to accomodate laundries - placing them under stairs, incorporating them into kitchens and bathroom. It's all about the layout, not necessarily the space, to create a great functional laundry.

Here is an example of one of mine. It's a laundry incorporated with the kitchen:

Tailored Interior · More Info

This one is a hidden and compact laundry:

Laundry Built into a cupboard Laundry open! · More Info

Pull out pantry to house laundry detergents and sundries · More Info

Laundry closed · More Info

Laundry's in cupboard's for division are great if they have good drip dry hanging spaces. Landry's should be separated from kitchen's for hygiene reasons. Spaces to dedicated laundry's work best for reasons such as out of site, acoustics to the rest of the house, it is a work room and for some this means serious mud etc... Once upon a time in Australia and else where Laundry's were accessed by leaving the main house and entering a seperate room and if you were lucky it had a toilet in it's own cubicle off of it. Dedicated laundry spaces are best, but not always possible, so clever design of function and aesthetics is a must. For thoughtful Interior design in Canberra, gives us a call to chat about your laundry needs. CORE INTERIORS, Qualified Interior Designers, Canberra Australia. 0409605323 ask for Jennifer.

Hi brilliant design concepts, love how you've used this space for us "multi tasking females", and use of the sliding door. Love the shaker profile doors, perfect, are the washer and dryer in a cupboard, doesn't matter because the sliding door would take care of any possible noise. The hanging space in front of the window is ideal had this in a unit which had a small galley kitchen with a sliding door at one end, to the left was the laundry tub with a window which was where the shirts were hung and to the right the washer dryer. Just love your work.

Don't forget the pull out "Hotel" clothes line over the bath this is really handy in small spaces especially in unkind weather, even better if there's a window next to the bath.

I incorporated my laundry and disability access toilet into a perfect multipurpose room for my old age. Toilet and good wheelie walker /wheelchair turning circle on one side and the laundry along the other wall. Stone bench top with cupboards and washer below with small cupboards above. The basin is round stainless as hand basin with a mirror above, and a hanging rail above for wet clothes / shirts that don't need ironing(they go straight back into my cupboard when dry). It is perfect when guests come over to have a separate toilet in my granny flat size house. Lots of spare space next to toilet for washing basket, waste bin and sorting washing