Top Tips for Designing Your Laundry
As any family knows, the Laundry is a very busy area of the house and one that you want to make as efficient as possible, to limit the time spent on laundry duties.
Questions to ask yourself when preparing to design or have your Laundry designed:
- Do you do your ironing in your Laundry?
- Do you fold your washing in your Laundry?
- How close is your Laundry to the outside and your clothesline?
- What lighting do you need in you Laundry?
- What ventilation do you have/need?
- Would you like a cubbyhole for family members to collect their laundry from?
- Do you need to store your mop, broom and vacuum cleaner in your Laundry?
- How much storage do you need for cleaning products and buckets?
- Do you need to store pet food and related equipment?
- Do you want to store your linen in your Laundry?
- Do you love arranging flowers and storing vases in your Laundry?
Your most limiting factor when designing your Laundry, aside from budget, is the space you have available. Large Laundries can include a pet washing area, inside drying rack space and a number of space consuming features. Most people have to compromise on their wish list to work with their available space.
I recommend writing a Wish List for your new Laundry. You can source ideas from looking at photos in magazines, on www.pinterest.com and www.houzz.com, looking at friend’s Laundries and thinking about your ideal space.
The next step is to get clever about how you maximise the Laundry space you have available so that you can incorporate as many aspects of your wish list as possible.
- Bench space – enables you to fold in your laundry and stops it being spread around other areas of the house. The best way to achieve that is by using a front load washing machine, rather than a top loading one.
- Great storage – utilise the full height of the room with cupboards. Pull out or tilt down laundry hampers for dirty washing are fantastic and there are a number of options available.
- A well sized sink with a nice high tap, so that you can fit buckets and tall vases under the tap to fill up.
- Broom cupboard – tall space to store brooms, mops, vacuum cleaner and ironing board along with buckets and the like.
- Electric drying cupboards, like the ASKO one, are fantastic. They are a very tidy and energy efficient way of drying clothes and shoes that you can’t or don’t put in the dryer. It removes the need for having drying racks up inside which make your house feel messy and like you are constantly surrounded by laundry during the raining months. When you aren’t using the drying cupboard you can use it for storing clothes to be ironed.
- A linen cupboard with a low watt cupboard heater is a great option if you have the space. Lovely slatted shelves enhance the linen cupboard too.
- A pull out shelf is invaluable when you are short of space as you can use it for folding laundry, placing a washing basket and sorting laundry.
- A built in ironing board is a great idea if you always do you ironing in the Laundry.
- Include at least one drawer. You can store the odd socks in it when the other one is missing in action (how often does that happen?). You can also have a container in the drawer to collect interesting objects found in pockets as well as the inevitable coins.
- A hanging rack is a great option if you can find the space. You can hang shirts to be ironed and jackets to be aired.
- Great lighting is essential. You will need both task lighting and general room lighting, depending on the tasks you will carry out in your Laundry. LED strip lighting can be a great option under overhead cupboards.
With so many options available it really does pay to do your research, make your wish list and employ a designer with expertise and experience with designing great Laundries.
