This Laundry Room Design Trick Will Make Washing Your Clothes a Whole Lot Easier

Laundry rooms can often be a neglected space, normally just a dumping ground for dirty clothes, or, if it doubles as a mudroom, a spot for coats and shoes and other accessories. But if it’s not living up to its true functional potential, it’s going to make laundry day and everyday life a little bit harder.

When designing your laundry room for success, the trick is to making sure you dedicate specific areas for each job, which is what Rachel Seldin of Seldin Design Studios did in this space for her clients, two stay-at-home parents in a San Francisco house. Tucked behind the kitchen and awkwardly exposed to the back staircase, it was a cramped nook that could barely fit a side-by-side washer and dryer along with its tiny sink. It didn’t have much storage and lacked functionality.

Vivian Johnson

“The space felt like a laundry afterthought, as if the washer and dryer were dropped there without a second thought beyond proximity to the kitchen,” Rachel explains. “While an extra sink was a nice touch, its position overlooking the staircase felt oddly out of place. Every time I glanced at it, I couldn’t shake the mental image of water droplets rolling down the wall onto the stairs.”

The goal for the room was to turn it into a multipurpose space: A laundry room with a a space to throw dirty towels and for air-drying clothes; a coffee nook to showcase a mug collection and hold the clients’ coffee maker and espresso machine; and a full-fledged pantry that could make space for a microwave. For the design aesthetic, they decided to bring back the Victorian charm that had been missing from the house—like antique brass fixtures and finishes, a bead board backsplash, and a traditional sawtooth shelf system for open shelving.

Vivian Johnson

Since Rachel and team had converted the full bathroom next to the laundry room into a powder room, that gave them more space—three feet to be exact. “This might sound like a questionable choice, but there was a thoughtful reason behind the decision,” Rachel says. “A year before we got our hands on the first floor to remodel, we revamped the top floor, adding a second full bathroom and upgrading the primary bath. With this in mind, we realized two things: We still needed a powder room on the first floor, and it made more sense to prioritize laundry space over a rarely used full bath.”

Vivian Johnson

Rachel created an L-shaped layout, which allowed for a spacious countertop, a dishwasher, and a full-height pantry. They were also able to keep the sink. They also got rid of the window since its main purpose was to brighten the old full bathroom. “It wasn’t doing much for the laundry area, especially with the skylight already flooding the room with natural light,” Rachel explains. “Once the window was out and the wall got pushed back, we had actual space to make this a functional room.”

The middle part of the countertop became the coffee bar area, with space underneath for a hamper that could hold dirty dish towels. They added two full-height cabinets to the left of the washer-dryer stack. And this is where the importance of every spot having a clear functional role comes in—one cabinet has the cleaning supplies, brooms, and mops, and the other is a pull-out drying rack so the clients can both wash and air-dry clothes at the same time.

Vivian Johnson

“In a small space, every inch counts—especially when it needs to be super functional,” says Rachel. “I’ll admit, I was a bit worried it might feel cramped and confusing with all the different uses very visible. But, by dedicating specific areas for each function, the space ended up feeling incredibly cohesive and purposeful. And none of this would have happened if we hadn’t made the bold choice to snatch some space from a perfectly good bathroom! In the end, we not only improved the laundry room but also ended up with two spaces that work even better than before.”

With a room like this, you probably wouldn’t mind laundry day, which is how Rachel’s clients feel about the little corner of their home now.