La La La Laundry Rooms.

I love designing laundry rooms, I’m always very happy when one is part of a renovation plan.

Here are my top 6 must have’s in a laundry room

1. Appliances that are scaled to suit you, your home and your space. Even if you do own 18 pairs of jeans, do you really need to wash them all at the same time? When I first moved here the size of laundry appliances really freaked me out – they are massive. The larger the machine the more energy it guzzles. Really think about what you need when it comes time to renew yours.

2. A laundry sink that is scaled to suit you, your home and your space. Unless you wash the family pet or need a very deep sink for some other use I don’t recommend having anything over 10″ deep. A deep sink isn’t that back friendly and very few of us do a lot of hand washing. When I renovated our laundry room 5 years ago my contractor was appalled at my miniature sink it’s 9.5″ deep – it’s perfect for us.

3. A faucet with a high neck and an extension hose – a must for filling up buckets!

4. Folding space – I love front loading appliances for this very reason.

5. Concealed storage for detergents and cleaning materials – I love using IKEA kitchen cabinets in my laundry room make-overs. They are well priced and a 12″ pull-out between the washer and dryer provides perfect storage.

6. Good ventilation – if your laundry room is in an enclosed space behind doors a good exhaust fan is a must. Moisture and heat provide perfect growing conditions for mould and you don’t want that. Install a fan with a built-in humidity detector and it will turn itself on and off when required.

Here are a few of my favourite laundry rooms from my portfolio – enjoy the before & after pictures!

This laundry room was one of the smallest and most challenging I’ve worked on, the basement had been previously benched so we had an 8″ high x 8″ deep concrete border along the external walls. We incorporated compact Miele appliances and adjusted an IKEA base cabinet so that it partly concealed (sat over)the benching. We added a deep but narrow sink and off-set the faucet. The oak countertop was another IKEA purchase. This we varnished using marine deck varnish to prevent any water penetration. The flooring is a gorgeous cushioned vinyl floor in a faux bamboo pattern. This room works because everything is scaled properly.

The previous appliances were stacked but this meant that there was a lot of dead floor space behind them. The laundry sink was functional but not that nice to look at.

We increased the depth of the benching and formed a base for the appliances to sit on. I loved that my clients were happy to work with the red high gloss doors, they really make this small room shine.

This space was in fact in a newly built town home, at the time of photograph the space wasn’t yet finished by the builder. In addition to what you see here there was also a base cabinet with a sink that was installed in the empty space adjacent to the appliances. The layout was shockingly bad and it was really hard to access the washing machine – all north American washers are hinged on the left hand side (repeat 100 times) and they are not interchangeable. ONLY dryer doors can be switched. To save my client excessive chiropractic bills we totally remodeled this space. We removed the closet at the laundry entrance and installed a bank of upper and lower cabinets, a ceaserstone countertop and a tumbled marble backsplash. In order to bring the appliances flush with the front of the countertop we were able to ‘borrow’ some space from a stair closet behind the laundry room wall. I love this room! Cabinets again came from IKEA. The high-gloss finish provides a lot of reflection so that the space appears wider.

This laundry room is my most popular image on Houzz – just goes to show how many people love laundry rooms.

Prior to the renovation the appliances and sink were in a row just off to the right hand side of the picture.

Here we have a very generous room that leads onto a mudroom. I’ve used IKEA cabinets (again) – you really can’t beat the price and I love the high gloss grey doors. Very soon I shall run out of colours…………….. These appliances sit on pedestals (which is why they look so high), we opted to frame them in to keep the dust bunnies at bay.

This is a laundry room from a project we completed 5 years ago. The laundry room is located in a rear hallway in the basement, from this hallway you can access the shower room and the furnace room. I wanted it to look really streamlined – we tiled the full height of the walls above the countertop and added a hanging bar for air drying. I love the addition of the wall sconce. When the laundry room is not in use, you can turn of the pot lights and add a little mood lighting with the sconce. Simple but effective!

If your laundry room is a walk-in closet with stacked appliances – don’t despair. Asko have this really clever laundry aide. It’s a pull out basket that fits between the washer and dryer. This way you can catch-all your freshly dried clothes and carry them to another room for folding! This way you don’t have to worry about where to store your laundry basket – GENIUS.

Another really clever idea that I am going to deploy on a project very soon is this one –

I found the image on Pintrest and just love it. Really like the fact that the door is painted black to match the appliances. Don’t care much for the chalk writing but love the simplicity of the wire storage. Having gorgeous products also helps.

Happy Laundry!

Next week I think it’s going to be about hall closets – slowly but surely we’ll tackle every room and get things on track.

Have a great weekend.

Gillian