13 Useful Laundry Room Ideas
December 26, 2019Having a dedicated laundry room can make life a lot easier. And, when you design and build a custom home, you get to choose where your laundry room lives within your home as well as what it looks like and the features it includes. Here are a few useful laundry room ideas to consider for your laundry room:
1. Consider Your Laundry Needs
Before you jump into designing a laundry room for your custom home, it’s important to take a moment and think about your laundry needs and the things that frustrate you about your current laundry room. This will help you identify the major things you want in a laundry room that will make it more functional. For example, if you find yourself feeling cramped in your current laundry room, then you know you need to design a larger laundry room in your custom home to ensure you have plenty of space.
Also, consider everything you need to do in the laundry room. Do you sort clothing before it goes into the washer? Do you need an area to air dry certain clothing items? Will you be folding clothes once they’re finished drying? Will you need to iron anything? Answering these questions will help you determine what else you may need to include in the laundry room as well as a layout that makes sense.
2. Put the Laundry Room in a Convenient Place
Also, think about where in your home dirty clothes are going to accumulate the most and about what your laundry routine might look like. This can give you a better idea of what the best laundry room placement would be in your custom home.
Depending on your family, home layout, and lifestyle, the most convenient place for your laundry room could be close to the master bedroom, on the second floor, in the basement, or close to the garage or a mudroom. Second-floor laundry rooms are popular custom home design ideas. No matter which placement you choose, the important thing is that it makes doing laundry more convenient for you.
3. Go With Waterproof Flooring
No matter how much you monitor and maintain your appliances, there is always a chance that something can happen that would cause accidental flooding in your laundry room. Whether it’s a flood, wet clothes, or accidental spills, moisture or liquids can end up on your laundry room floor. Choosing a waterproof flooring that is durable, easy to clean, and easy to maintain is the best flooring for laundry rooms and will make your life easier and keep your laundry room looking great.
4. Consider Soundproofing
Laundry rooms can be noisy. There may be noise from your washer and dryer in general and there may also be noise caused by vibrations from the machines as they work. As you design your laundry room, reducing this noise should be a consideration, especially if your laundry room will be placed near common living areas, bedrooms, or on the second floor.
Fitting your machines with vibration pads can help stabilize your appliances and also dampen the noise that can occur when the machines are in use. On top of that, you can consider thicker walls around your laundry room, more insulation, and/or actual soundproofing material to help reduce potential noise further.
5. Play With Bright Colors and Patterns
Laundry rooms are notorious for being a plain, bright white. This can still make for a beautiful laundry room and might be a good choice for you. But, you don’t have to limit yourself to a bright white or a cream if you don’t want to.
Play around and explore other bright colors. You can paint the walls or go with a touch of brightness by painting the cabinets or adding a cool backsplash. You can also play with textures and patterns for a laundry room with a creative splash.
6. Include a Workspace and a Window
Whether you include a built-in counter in your laundry room or add a table, having a workspace can help make dealing with laundry a little bit easier.
Not only does this give you more room to keep things you’re currently using in easy reach, but it also allows you to deal with laundry-related tasks without needing to leave the laundry room. You can also include built-in cabinets and more storage in these areas for easier maintenance and efficiency overall.
Including a window is another useful laundry room idea, especially with a workspace. Whether you’re sorting, spot treating, folding, or something else, having a window can provide some natural light, give you a beautiful, relaxing view, and enhance the overall look and feel of the room.
7. Think About Adding a Sink
One of the useful laundry room ideas to add a sink. Some people want a sink in their laundry room and some people don’t. If you’ll need access to water for any reason, including a sink in your laundry room can make things a lot easier. Whether it’s spot-treating something, diluting liquids, washing your hands, hand-washing delicates, soaking something, and more, having a sink in the room can make the whole process more efficient.
8. Get Creative with Storage
Having enough storage is important for any room in your home and the laundry room is no different. Keeping a tidy laundry room often means making the most of potentially limited space. You can also get really creative with storage in this space, which can help free up space in the rest of your home.
If you have hidden drying racks or folding ironing board storage in your laundry room, you don’t need to store those items in other areas of your home. You can even hang drying racks from the ceiling to take advantage of vertical storage space! You can do the same with hooks to hang up your ironing board if one that folds out isn’t your style.
Built-in cabinets, hidden drawers, floating shelves, a peg wall, wall hooks, hanging bars, and more are all great options for adding some versatile storage to your laundry room. This is especially nice if you know you will need to store hangers, hang clothes to dry sometimes, and more. You can store everything related to laundry in the laundry room and still have what you need for anything else that comes up within reach.
9. Use Containers & Labels
Containers and labels are useful for storing just about anything and they can help you keep your laundry room organized too. This is especially true if you have a big family. When everyone is bringing their laundry into the laundry room, it can be difficult to keep everyone’s clothing from getting mixed together or figuring out which sock belongs to which person. With labeled containers or standing laundry bags, keeping things organized and separated is easy.
10. Collect Loose Change
Loose change and other lost things are all part of doing laundry. Having a place to collect all of that can be a great way to keep it from taking up counter space. A jar for loose change and an open container for other “found” items can help you corral these small items and make it easy for your family to check the “lost and found” for anything they may have left in their clothes. Plus, when the jar of change is full, you can turn it into the bank or a coin counter machine and get a little bit of a bonus to save for a rainy day or use to splurge on something fun.
11. Pin Socks Together
Lost socks are another common laundry misadventure. But, if you pin your socks together before they go in the hamper, washer, or dryer, then you have a better chance of keeping the pair together. Sometimes, nothing is more frustrating than having a single sock and being unable to find its matching pair. But, pinning them together can help you keep more pairs of socks together longer.
12. Place Appliances on a Pedestal
Placing things on pedestals is usually reserved for sculptures and art. But, putting your appliances on a pedestal can sometimes be one of the most useful laundry room ideas. Not only can this help secure your washer and dryer while protecting the floor, but you can also get more storage space and an easier reach by raising them up depending on how you do it.
13. Add a Personal Touch
Once you have all the big pieces in place, don’t forget to add a personal touch. Just because it’s your laundry room doesn’t mean it has to be plain or boring. It’s a room you’ll be spending some time in, so why not add some personal design touches to create an atmosphere you’ll like spending time in?
You can try out a unique decorating style or match it to the rest of your custom home decor. Whatever you choose to do, it should enhance your experience while you’re in the room. With several of these laundry room ideas in place, you can make the laundry room a place where you don’t mind spending a little bit of time and one that makes doing laundry a little easier.
These are just a few useful laundry room ideas to get you thinking about what you might want and need in your own. Working with an experienced custom home builder, especially one with an in-house design/build process, can help you get what you want in every room of your home to truly end up with the home of your dreams. If you’re ready to get started on your own custom home and bring your dream home to life, contact Custom Home Group at 717-284-4090!