Why create a laundry area in your home
The culture of a laundry room in the home is not yet well established in Europe. In most homes, the washing machine is placed in the bathroom, sometimes even in the kitchen, because the square footage of the home does not always allow the owner to have a laundry room. Having a laundry area, however, remains dream, not too secret, of housewives, who know the importance of having a space for washing and ironing clothes at their disposal. A space that should not only take into account aesthetic, but above all functionality. It must rotate around the main appliance, but it is also good to have drawers, support surfaces and cupboards to store detergent, fabric softener, various sized washing bowls, stain removers and so on.
How much space does it take to set up the laundry area?
In any case, it is not necessary to have a whole room available to set up the laundry area. If you are able to optimize the space, or you have the possibility to contact an architect who can study a tailor-made solution for you, even a well-organized corner could be suitable for this purpose. It could be obtained from a storage closet, from a pantry or from a hall space, enclosing the necessary space for the washer and the dryer with plasterboard. This space should not be less than 5 square meters for logical-practical matters.
What you need to set up the laundry area
The first thing to keep in mind, when you decide to set up a laundry area at home to simplify the process of washing, drying and ironing, is that there are four elements that you absolutely cannot do without. First, a sink will be essential, with the size depending on the space you have available, where you can hand-wash the things that you cannot put in the washing machine, or just let them soak for pre-treating. The taps must be classic and functional, but it would also be useful to provide a shower head for washing and rinsing the sink itself. For obvious reasons the space dedicated to the washing machine, where the outlets for drains and water connections must be made in advance, is essential in a laundry area. Cabinets are necessary to store the products and accessories for the laundry. Everything must have a place and always be close at hand, if you want to optimize your time and transform the moment dedicated to laundry in a simple and quick routine. If the space allows it, you could complete the preparation of the laundry area with shelves as shelf room is always useful.
How to arrange the elements to set up the laundry area
Aesthetic is important, but the stylistic choices should never be a detriment to the functionality of the room that you are preparing to set up. This means that the sink must be practical and comfortable and equipped with a tap suitable for the circumstances rather than something which is simply aesthetically appealing. It is better to choose a sink in sturdy ceramic, possibly anti-limescale and anti-scratch, rather than one in stone, which is much more delicate and basically useless in a space where you do the laundry and nothing more. As for appliances, stacking them on top of each other is the best solution to optimize the available space. There are special accessories on the market that allow you to stack the washing machine and dryer in order to keep them from moving or even worse, to keep them from falling because of excessive oscillation.
Optimizing the laundry area with organizers
The wall units will have to be large enough to contain the large quantity of things that almost certainly you will always want to have at hand in the laundry area. If the space is narrow, it will be better to opt for sliding doors or for exposed cabinets. In both cases, the organizers for wall units and drawers will be decisive. They are useful in the kitchen but also in the laundry, because they allow you to organize products and accessories at best and take them out when needed without having to put everything in disarray. We suggest stocking up on baskets, boxes of various sizes and transparent plastic boxes that allow you to see what is inside.
Setting up the laundry area with imagination
If you have the possibility to set up a spacious laundry area and not just a corner carved from a niche, you will have to think about the clothes lines on which to hang the laundry. Their placement should not in any way hinder all the other operations that you will perform in the laundry room, which is why it should be studied in detail so not to impede movement. At this point, you just have to complete the laundry area with accessories and decorations, because if it is true that functionality is in first place, it is equally true that the eye wants its part even in the less exposed spaces of the house. As for all the other rooms you should choose a dominant colour that can play down the total white of the laundry room and the appliance surface. You should therefore opt for coloured dispensers, soap dishes, matching boxes and various accessories to be placed here and there. It could be nice to print on a hard cardboard a vade-mecum for the laundry, such as the translations of the various symbols on the clothes labels. You can frame them and hang the up, to keep them in mind and to embellish a space that, otherwise, would be anonymous and impersonal.