5 Tips For Decorating Small Laundry Rooms
How To Decorate Small Laundry Rooms
Laundry rooms are useful, especially in winter when the weather is less favorable for drying, and if you live in an apartment or smaller house in which space is at a premium. How can the more modest space at your disposal be made more effective? Well, here are five tips to get you started.
What is in the laundry room?
The most obvious answer to this question is that there are washers and dryers, or at the very least washing machines in your most laundry rooms. There are also laundry baskets, laundry bags hanging racks, detergents, softeners, clothes hangers, irons, ironing boards, and maybe even stain removing treatments together with a whole host of other knick-knacks that are clothes and fabrics related.
If you happen to have a slightly smaller than average space in which to fit all this stuff, then you may consider:
1. The vertical approach
There’s no reason why your washer and dryer have to be arranged horizontally, to take up valuable floor space in your small laundry room, leaving no room for anything else. Consider stacking them one on top of the other, concealing them behind a cabinet door, which you can install yourself or pay someone to do. With a bit of tweaking, the in-built vent can be stored in there, and you will suddenly be freeing up valuable square footage of space for other things.
2. The innovative approach
Just as a shower stall can go pretty much anywhere in your home, washers and dryers don’t have to be stored in your small laundry room. By paying a relatively modest amount to a local tradesman you can have your washer and dryer strategically put into another place in your house or apartment, thus freeing up valuable space in your existing laundry room. In other words, you don’t have to have everything in that one tiny little room but can innovate so as to spread the burden across all the available space.
3. The storage approach
There are some things you can never have too much of in this life; drawers, cabinets, closets, and shelving are among them. By using the space behind your laundry room door, as well as space higher up, you can create storage areas that are making full use of those awkward or ‘dead’ spaces that few think of maximizing. Having a stool or small step-ladder handy can mean that you can easily have access to such higher up, awkward to get to space.
4. The ironing board approach
After you’ve washed and dried all your laundry, you still have one step left to complete, that is, to iron the fabrics and clothes. Why not store your ironing board on a specially designated shelf or better still, use your ironing-board as a shelf, which can be taken down whenever you need to use it. You probably won’t want to store heavy and durable things upon it, but it could be chiefly used for various odds and ends. When you’re done, simply clip back into place and you have your shelf back again – no extra need for a special ironing-board storage area.
5. The durable approach
It might sound like stating the obvious, but the more durable your laundry room floor the better. Carpet or linoleum are poor bedfellows when compared with the prince of flooring – tiling. Tiles are known for being waterproof, sealed in, tough, scratch-resistant things. The other advantage is that they are small enough to be cut into the exact shape your small laundry room requires, which may well be an L-shape or slightly jagged. A floor drain is worth having installed, so as to make cleaning up from the mess and spillage that much easier and more hygienic.
Overall, these are just some starting points for helping to make your small laundry room work for you. It’s not that hard to make some small, incremental changes that will pay dividends in the long run. It is a real bonus to have a laundry room in the first place, washing being such an ongoing and essential part of human existence. It can be therapeutic, too, to have a designated place in which to deal with all your dirty laundry. You can switch on your washer, dry it out, iron, and achieve a certain sense of calm and peace of mind.
Five tips can get you started, but you will surely be able to tailor and tweak more innovations to suit your particular home. Remember, it’s not the size of your laundry room that counts but the extent to which you use its available space. The rise of Marie Kondo’s philosophy has shown us that less is often more. In other words, the smaller space the more you will cherish it and use it well.
Sources:
- 22 Laundry Room Ideas – Decoholic
- Adding Style To Your Laundry Room – New York Institute of Art and Design