Your laundry room may be the most overlooked room in the house, but that doesn’t mean it has to be an eyesore. Renovating the laundry room can give it new life and can make it a much more welcoming area to be in. If you aren’t sure how to go about it, though, or you just want some laundry renovation ideas or tips, then start here with our laundry renovations guide.

If you’re considering renovating your laundry room, click here for an instant quote or give our friendly team a call on 1300 304 367.

Pictures and Ideas: Laundry Renovations

1. Hide the appliances in your laundry room

The laundry room is all about the appliances, but they don’t have to be the first thing everyone sees when they enter that room. You can use a few tricks to hide your appliances and make the laundry room feel a bit more inviting and visually appealing.

One way to do this is to hide your appliances behind a small partition. You don’t have to build a full wall to cordon off the dryer and washer, but you can make a small outcropping that hides the appliances from view as you enter the laundry room. Then you can decorate this outcropping with some designs or use it in a functional way by fitting it with hooks and hanging some items there.

Lots of laundry renovations we see are focused heavily on appliances. But appliances can be a real eyesore, and it can be cheaper to just hide them away rather to to get new ones. You can do that by building a cabinet around your machines, keeping them tucked away until they are needed. Just be sure that this closet gives you enough space to open the doors of your washing machine and dryer and that it doesn’t prevent the rest of the laundry room from being easy to move around in.

If you are tight on money, though, be sure to consider all relevant factors when you plan for laundry renovations. That can help save you from some headaches and budget problems later on.

2. Make your laundry room accessible to the outside

The laundry room often becomes a storage area for the entire house, and people put all their odds and ends in there that don’t have another specific location to go in. This means that you will need to go in the laundry for all sorts of reasons, including needing to use things from in there in your garden or deck, or to do various outdoor activities. If you don’t have a shed or other outbuilding on your property, the laundry room often functions as a place to store tools, so it makes sense that you will want to be able to go from the laundry room to the outside of your house without having to walk around to another room.

It just makes sense to have the outdoors accessible from the laundry room, and that’s a consideration you will want to make before you get too deep into your laundry renovation project.

3. Laundry renovations should be designed around machines

Whether you have a front-loading washing machine or a top loader can make a big difference in planning laundry renovations. You might not have a washing machine or dryer yet as you plan this renovation, so keep in mind that there are different kinds of machines that open in these two different ways. In addition to this, don’t place a shelf directly over a top-loading machine, for example. You also need to give plenty of space to the front and sides of your front loader, if you want it to be easy to work with.

You’ll also need to give plenty of space to whatever appliances you have in the laundry room. Once again, if you don’t know what kind of machine you will be getting and its dimensions, then you need to make some extra space, just in case. The Guardian says that most washing machines are 600mm wide. Front loaders tend to be about 850mm high. The actual size of yours may vary, but you can use these numbers as a guide.

Cavity sizes required for installation | Via Fisher & Paykel on HomeBeautiful

4. Don’t forget storage space!

When designing a laundry room, a lot of homeowners will forget to add in storage space for all the small items that belong in a room. You’ll obviously think about where your washer and dryer will go, but what about your laundry detergent, dirty clothes, ironing board and other essentials that can be found in most laundry rooms? If your laundry room doubles as a mud room, then you will want to make room for storing shoes and coats.

The storage spaces can be cabinets, shelves, hooks or racks, and they need to be practical and functional. They don’t have to be bland either. You can use ideas from this article to get some motivation to change up your laundry room and give it a little more personality.

You always want to plan just a bit of extra storage space when it comes to laundry renovations, because you never know what you are going to end up wanting to place in a room. Extra storage gives you more options, and it can always be removed later if you find it isn’t necessary.

5.  Make your laundry room a mud room

We just mentioned mud rooms, and if you aren’t failure with the concept, the mud room is simply an entry room that allows you to store your dirty shoes, coats and other clothes after time out the rain, snow or mud. The laundry room is the perfect place for your mud room, as you can just put the dirty clothes directly into the laundry baskets or washing machine. You’ll minimise how much mud and debris you track through the house this way and have everything in one convenient location.

6. Prepare it for water!

The laundry room is a very hardworking room. That means there will be messes and spills there that will need to be cleaned up on a regular basis. The floor is likely to get wet or dirty, so you want a floor that is easy to clean up. Tile floors, vinyl tile or stone work really well for laundry rooms, according to The Spruce. You don’t want to use laminate, carpet or hardwood, though, as they can be hard to clean up if you have a water spill or leak.

You want a room that can handle some water issues, as your laundry room is most likely to have them from time to time. You might even want to consider installing some sort of drainage in the floor. There is no need to be paranoid about water problems in the laundry room, but you should be well prepared for them when considering a laundry renovation.

7. Make sure there is plenty of ventilation

If your laundry room has outside access, then you can simply put in some windows to make it properly ventilated. Otherwise, you will need to seriously consider the ventilation issue. If you will be using a dryer in that room, then you want to be able to vent the heat outside. You’ll also want a way to air out the room to deal with wet, unpleasant smelling clothes.

Get an instant laundry renovation quote today!

Your laundry room can be a special place that’s a joy to spend some time in, but you need to take some care in how you renovate it. Use these tips and talk to the friendly Houseace team (1300 304 367 or hello@houseace.com) before you set anything in stone… or concrete or tile! We offer instant laundry renovation quotes and fixed prices with no hidden costs.