Laundry Love
Turn your unsung hero into a room that sings.
The laundry is usually the last room in the house to undergo a makeover. While its glamorous stablemates – kitchens and bathrooms – receive all the attention, the laundry reliably hums away in the background. But show the laundry some love – combined with good planning and design – and you’ll soon be humming happily too.
“Laundries have traditionally been neglected, but people are increasingly putting thought into the design and look of them,” says Sweden-born, Sydney-based interior designer Anna-Carin McNamara, author of Make a Home to Love. “I recently had a client who said ‘I want the laundry tobesomethingunexpected.WhenIspend time there, I want to feel happy’.”
It’s an understandable aspiration: create a room that makes you happy and it will help elevate the everyday activity of doing the washing. And who doesn’t want that?
But the laundry is so much more than just a place to wash clothes, says AnnaCarin, whose design approach is based on the Scandinavian principles of “simplicity, functionality and sustainability”. In most households, the laundry is also the place for storing all the things that don’t belong anywhere else: reusable shopping bags, sewing kits, shoe polish, picnic baskets, gardening tools, gumboots... the list goes
on. “In most homes, the laundry is very much a multipurpose room,” she says.
The key to designing a laundry begins with planning and attention to detail, says Anna-Carin, an ambassador for Swedish appliance brand Electrolux. First, make sure the design encourages daylight and fresh air into the room. “Then put your thoughts on paper. Think about all the things you store in the laundry and create clear, defined spaces for each of them.”
The aim is to streamline the storage and de-clutter benchspace. “Optimise storage with floor-to-ceiling shelving; include hooks and racks on the walls for hanging items. Consider storage for your iron, ironing board and vacuum cleaner. I always like to place the washing machine and dryer under the bench to maximise benchspace, and I highly recommend including space for a clothes drying rack, and hanging space for shirts.”
For luxurious touches, Anna-Carin recommends under-floor heating and stone for the benchtop. The laundry is not on view so you can be adventurous with colour, she says. “It’s also a place where you can play with tiles and textures.” Accessories are important too: think sleek trays and containers – “little things that give you a bit of enjoyment every time you use them”.