BREAK THE CYCLE

Your laundry area, whether it’s a tiny closet or a corner of the basement, can actually be a happy place.

In a recent Washington project, Jessica Centella and Kiera Kushlan of Residents Understood designed a laundry space as part of a total basement renovation. Their client, who loves pink, wanted something fun with storage and a sink suitable for bathing dogs. The designers decided a patterned tile would add some spice to the tight space. “White tile was definitely not happening,” Centella says. “We wanted a unique color combination that you don’t see everywhere.”

At Home Depot, they discovered Merola Egeo Quios encaustic porcelain tiles with an orange, green, black and pink Moroccan-style motif. They installed them on the floor and halfway up the walls, painted the rest of the room with Benjamin Moore’s Super White in eggshell finish, added shelving and installed a farmhouse-style Randolph Morris cast-iron sink. “I would encourage people to think about laundry spaces like they do the rest of the rooms in the house,” Centella says.

Like powder rooms, laundry rooms are often small spaces where you can express your personality with a bit of bold wallpaper and some unexpected flooring. While designers and organizers are coming up with new ways to make the most of these spaces, appliance manufacturers are rolling out new features to make washers and dryers more efficient and better-looking.

Here are some ways to refresh, energize and bring joy to the place where you wash your socks.

Tile the floors