Neal's Home Remodeling and Design Blog

Laundry is one of the essential chores we all do, and a well-designed laundry room is an asset in any home. In the past, the basement seemed to be the perfect spot to hook up a washer and dryer. The mechanical considerations were easily handled, but the inconvenience of dragging everything downstairs (and back up again) never quite made those considerations feel worth it. Today, homeowners are creating laundry spaces that better meet their needs on any floor of their home. Careful planning, prioritizing efficiency, and regular maintenance now allow for many more possibilities. Here are 6 tips for designing a functional laundry room.

An awkwardly large laundry room in this Symmes Township home was a great opportunity to create a functional space with unique amenities.

Updated 8/14/17 | Original Post 9/18/2012

Laundry is one of the essential chores we all do, and a well-designed laundry room is an asset in any home. In the past, the basements seemed to be the perfect spot to hook up a washer and dryer. The mechanical considerations were easily handled, but the inconvenience of dragging everything downstairs (and back up again) never quite made those considerations feel worth it. Today, homeowners are creating laundry spaces that better meet their needs on any floor of their home. Careful planning, prioritizing efficiency, and regular maintenance now allow for many more possibilities. Here are 6 tips for designing a functional laundry room.

The homeowner was looking for a solution for a collection of working spaces on their first floor. Altogether, the two rooms and the closet hallway compromised a good amount of space, but in their existing usage the space was dramatically under performing. This project was initiated to create a better plan to use the space more effectively, and to pull it into line with the higher-end style of the rest of the first floor. The project involves four distinct areas: laundry, craft, office, and hall spaces.

More and more people are finding that an office space at home is a modern convenience that's worth the investment. Not only is the work-from-home option available to more people, but our everyday digital lives often require some type of "base of operations" at home. The best thing about a home office is that, unlike your desk at a corporate office, you can dictate style and function. 

The laundry room could very well be the hub of the home. It's a space where efficiency and function call all the shots, but it can also be a welcoming and comfortable room that does more than handle the dirty work. Here we take a look at some of the ways the laundry room can be designed to run at full capacity.

Awkward rooms, weird hallways, odd spaces. We've all got them. From that out-of-the-blue angled wall, to the narrow room that isn't quite a room, but somehow doesn't qualify as a hallway either. In some homes, these spaces add character and charm, or possibly a sense of history or pedigree. But most of these types of spaces are throwbacks that don't quite mesh with the modern ways we live our lives and utilize our homes. Here, we've scoured our gallery of design work, and found four projects that tackled the design challenge of the awkward space in four very different ways.