Sudsy Spaces

By Kate Riley May 20, 2010

Confession time, I’ve been sprucing up my laundry room this past week.  It struck me on Monday afternoon that I’d been avoiding that space for a good reason – it was outdated and not functioning as well as it could.  Plus I dread laundry. 

So I had a compulsive moment and started painting the cabinets which led to installing shelves which led to making window treatments.  I’ve convinced myself a spruced up washroom will fundamentally alter my aversion to laundry, and reverse my embarrassing habit of letting the clean piles of clothing get so high my children disappear under them.  

It’s almost done, but while I finish it off, how about a few gorgeous washrooms to inspire? 

swirl snip

What’s not to love about this beauty ?  I love the wainscoting and the picture frames on the white cabinetry, plus the oh so functional drying rack for delicates.  How soothing is this color on the walls ? I think I might like doing laundry in here.  But I think the floor needs a soft and playful patterned rug. 

rabaut design laundry room Rabaut Design via House of Turquoise

Oh, don’t you love that pop of apple green on the middle upper cabinet ?  I adore the blues and greens with crisp white cabinetry, and the contrast with the rustic wood folding table.  How incredible that shell fixture ?

my home ideas laundry My Home Ideas

Ooooh and ahh is all I can say to this one.  J’adore this Dash & Albert runner.

laundry room via houzz Canadian House and Home

This bright citrusy space feels so cheerful to me.  I can’t help but notice how the laundry soap matches the wall color !   

laundry room apartment therapy  Apartment Therapy

 

I love the fun colorful fabric used to disguise the basin sink and the glass jars on the stainless open shelving.  Don’t miss the rug – I love that graphic !

laundry room house and home ithink. Canadian House and Home

 

Simple and clean.  My favorite thing about this one is the glass pendant fixture. 

southern living idea house laundry Southern Living

 

Wake up with bold color in this vivid yet super functional laundry wall. 

container store laundry room The Container Store

 

Big style statement here !  I love the wallpaper in this bright multitasking room.  Wash, dry, press, and catch up on your daytime TV !

wallpapered laundry room Simple Effects

 

Love love love the wall color, stylish ironing board cover and acrylic stool.  Wow!

blue laundry roomDomino

 

Fantastic green walls and brick pattern blue tile backsplash.  I love the unconventional trio of sconces too, and that pop of orange on the window.  Fun!

cottage living green walls laundry Cottage Living via My Home Ideas

 

Oooh, more pretty wallpaper in another multitasking space, doing double duty as a laundry and gardening station.    Fantastic folding counter too !

cottage living laundry room Cottage Living via My Home Ideas

 

Robin’s egg blue paneled walls ?  Swoon. 

laundry room container store The Container Store

 

Ah, perfection.  Soft seafoam walls, a pretty ironing board cover, and tall glass jars of powdered soap. 

house beautiful laundry

 

Now I’m off to finish what I started – hopefully I’ll have something to show you later this weekend.    

swirl snip

Have you spruced up your laundry space lately ?  Got any great tips for stylish organization?  Do share !

 

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53 comments

  1. I love, love, love the third photo. Having a door to the outside in the laundry room is wonderful. When my girls were little I used to bring them in from the backyard & rinse them off in our deep laundry tub!
    Thanks for the 5th photo with the fabric skirt on the laundry tub. I have that same set up & keep the cat’s litter box under there. Guess what my next project is???

  2. How lovely! Those pictures make me long for a little laundry room to call my own. Can’t wait to see your space!

  3. Ha, my laundry room is the size of a peanut, each house it has gotten smaller and smaller! What is up with that?! Looking forward to seeing yours…I know it will be fabulously inspiring! Janell

  4. Yes my new favorite laundry room is the one sarah richardson did on her last renovation. It looks like a mini kitchen. I so want to wash clothes in that room!!! I cant wait to see what you have come up with!

  5. Call me crazy but I love looking at laundry room pictures. My laundry in is in need of a pick me up. I’ll take any one of those. :)

  6. Wow.Those front loading washer and dryers really make a difference in the look and organization of the laundry room. That flat surface opens up lots of possibilities. I’m a laundry-avoider, too. Maybe I should make that room my next project.

  7. Where can I find those white drying racks? I have a pretty decent laundry room but since I have pedastals under the washer and dryer I can’t really utilize the hanging rod. I asked my husband if he could hang a drying rack and he said “sure, just buy one and I’ll do it”. Now I don’t know where to look for one! Thanks!

  8. My house is pretty big, but my laundry room is woefully small. I’m thinking I need to do a complete overhaul. I freshened it up with paint and window mistreatment last summer. . . and it looked good for about a week. Ugh.

    You know what I’d really like? A laundress. One who loves to hang things to dry. And iron. And put things away.

    But since that particular staff member exists only in my imagination, I guess I really should address the laundry room. Only I’m going to start calling it “washroom,” like you did. That sounds much more civilized.

  9. I actually like doing laundry! But my washer and dryer are in the garage, no laundry room for me. I love to fold clothes at my kitchen table.

  10. In England I had a wonderful thing called a SheilaMade, a rack on pulleys to dry clothes indoors (in England I needed it). Now I hang things outside when I can, in California sunshine.
    Another wondrous thing from the Old World was the Aga. Damp things could be draped around its accommodating warmth, and if you folded sheets and put them on top of the shiny hotplate lids, they looked ironed, all the way through. Almost worth living in a cold country for!

  11. I just redid my laundry room in January. We stenciled one wall instead of doing wallpaper, I stacked my front loading washer and dryer to give us a lot more space, then my husband built a cabinet using plans from knock-offwood.com to give me a huge countertop and spots for laundry baskets, a return basket, shoes baskets for everyone, and a spot for an infant car seat since I had a baby in January too. To finish it off we hung hooks above the bench coming out from the cabinet for purses, coats, diaper bags, etc and also hung some hooks low so my toddler can hang up her own coats without needing my help. It seriously went from a small awkward room to a perfectly organized space that makes clutter magically disappear because everything has a home. Can’t wait to see how yours turns out!!

  12. I hate this post!!! I so want to make over my laundry room but where, oh where do I start? Paint? Cabinets? Light fixture? Those pictures are beautiful. Bea-U-tiful.

  13. kate! I’m not sure if there are frequencies or radio waves that run between N.Y. and C.A. but if there are we are on the same one!!! I just started pulling images of laundry rooms this week and created a sketch of what i wanted yesterday. This has happened multiple times that i start planning out or changing out a room or project and BAM! you run fantastic ideas about it!
    Maybe I have more power than I think :) Regardless, THANK YOU! great post-

  14. oh my gosh, I want to print out all these pics and spruce up my laundry room!
    thanks for the inspiration ~ Elizabeth

  15. oh my gosh, I want to print out all these pics and spruce up my laundry room!
    thanks for the inspiration ~ Elizabeth

  16. My laundry leaves a lot to be desired! I always try to spruce it up, but life takes over and the room goes back to it’s old state pretty quickly.

    Don’t you love it how in these photos, all the people have clothing and laundry items that compliment the colour of the space! Having a 1 year old child means that my piles of clothes looks like a rainbow threw up!

  17. If I had a laundry room that was more than folding doors into a
    tiny, tiny space I’d jump for joy… but “I can paint the back wall, maybe
    get rid of the wire shelves up top….might be a new project (after I finish
    the many, I’ve gotten myself into now)?
    Good luck with yours

    Sandy

  18. Love the laundry rooms you picked out. My laundry is also on “the list”. It’ll probably be last because of the same reasons. :)

  19. I will never catch up with any of you! Each post is a new thing to add to the list because I know the possibilities are out there! Now if I can only figure out how to make my laundry room/big dog’s sleeping quarters pretty and functional?! I love these photos! Thanks Kate!

  20. I did a post on laundry rooms a couple weeks ago too. Getting ready to “redo” mine as well. I’m VERY excited to see your big reveal! Maybe I’ll get some inspiration. =o)

  21. The color in the Cottage Living photo is close to what I had in mind for my laundry room — hope it looks this great after!

  22. I have that same picture from Domino torn out in my inspiration file :) When I finally get around to updating the laundry room I’ve always wanted to do a bright wall with a really graphic cover on my ironing board!

  23. I am moving my laundry room upstairs (glorious)nd need the inspiration. I want a crumb of each picture in mine. Yum!

  24. My laundry room would love a makeover. Sadly, it’s one of the last things on my to-do list. I’m sure yours will inspire!

    Kacey

  25. I love those! Wow!! I’ve been wanting to paint my laundry room and the cabinets for a while now… but now that our house is for sale I’ll pass. I’m saving the link to this post in case it doesn’t sell!

  26. I love the ones in the blue color family. Love the blue against white, so clean and crisp. Wish I had a laundry room to work with. The only thing I got is a laundry area in the basement. OK, this will be on my must-have list for the next house!
    Cannot wait to see what you did with yours. I just have a feeling it will be blue-ish tranquil place!

  27. IF i had a laundry room, I would do laundry and ironning all the time : ). Being out in the garage isn’t that much fun.

  28. That laundry room from the House of Torquoise is gorgeous! I love the soft blue and white pairing. My laundry room is in my dark and dirty 1940’s basement that occassionally floods. Short of a total overhaul, which would cost thousands, there is not much I can do to make this space fresh and inviting. Oh well.

  29. You’ve done it again, Kate. Another fine post of fabulous inspirational shots. Laundry rooms all over America are going to thank you! ( and a few husbands may curse you!) ; ) TGIF

  30. For my laundry room, I did not have enough shelves. So I took my old ironing board, pulled off the legs, painted it a nice red, and had my husband attach brackets to it and mount it on the wall above my washer and dryer. It provides extra storage without just being another boring ol’ shelf.

    And it adds to the 50’s style laundry room I wanted with minty green walls and red accessories.

    Good luck, I’m sure we’ll all be amazed at what you do, as usual.

  31. Love the beautiful laundry rooms but with my front load washer and dryer I would be lost (and in much back pain) if not for my step stool to sit on while switching laundry from washer to dryer… I am surprised none of these rooms have one…

  32. First of all, I love that we even have a laundry room in the first place, after sharing laundry in scary apartment basements for so long. It has a large window that my mom made a valance for, and I hung up some art on the walls. I would love to have a front-loading washing machine so that I could put a board on top for folding clothes, but that’s not in our future. We plan to add a linen cupboard and I’d like to make some kind of curtains to hide all the pipes.

  33. I actually just did a mini redo of our laundry room…in shades of pink and green…it’s such a “girly” space and a happy place to be! The previous owners painted the room smurf blue…not sure why?!? However, the laundry room had a lot of potential…built in cabinetry, a clothing rod installed under the cabinets, lots of space, etc. I actually have plenty of room to leave up my ironing board and have our large rolling laundry bin tucked away. So, with less than $150, I was able to completely change the space…new ironing board cover (pink and green polka dot), a can of bright pink paint, green plastic tubs from Dollar Tree, an apple green rug from Target, inspiring vinyl word art and (my favorite) an 8×10 (pink) “Keep Calm and Carry On” in a apple green frame. The room is so cheerful…even my husband and 7 year-old stepson love this room!

    Hopefully this cheerful space will remain clutter free…that’s my goal!

  34. Love the colors in these laundry rooms, Kate! We should keep them looking pretty ~ we’re in them often enough! How funny that one picture with the damask ironing board cover ~ I have a print in my boutique that looks just like that. I wish I had a window in mine, but I’m happy for the size of it and that I have some good cabinet space.

  35. If I had a laundry room that looked like any of those I would love doing laundry…in fact I may even look for things to wash and iron. My laundry roo as it is now though, is also the room with the furnace, hot water tank and electrical panel. It is ugly. There, I said it. I would not even now where to begin, but the pictures have inspired me….

  36. Your pictures definitely make me want to get out the paint and spruce up my laundry room. I love the pictures of the turquoise laundry rooms. They are so pretty. I am thinking of taking that one step further to re-do my guest room. I love the lighter turquoise walls with the white and then use black/white for accent. So pretty. Love & blessings from NC!

  37. My laundry space is in the middle of the hallfway, right when we enter the apart. That apart is so badly layed out that there’s no sun at all, very dark place. It’s painted beige like the living room it leads into. There’s white cabinet above my (very) old machines. SO boring. And as it’s in the entryway, it gets cluttered with all sort of stuff from pocket emptying to boxes of fabric to plastic flowers :S
    unfortunatly there’s not much I can do… Endure them another year till we move!

  38. The orange laundry room inspired me since I painted my laundry room that color so warm and cheery and brightens up a room that gets so much use! Loved all the other ideas as well, need to paint my office next but it happens to be my husbands hunting-lodge room sooo I’m looking for ideas for that as well. Maybe you can help me brainstorm…….let me know! Thanks, Chris

  39. I am looking forward to seeing what you’ve come up with. My husband and I are in the process of buying a new house and it doesn’t have a traditional laundry room or even one in a corner of the basement. It has a laundry closet, which is great because it’s right near the bedrooms but kinda stinks because I don’t know how to make it pretty due to it’s small size. Any suggestions?!?

  40. My favorite is the last one with sea foam green walls. Not because of the color or the layout. But because it is the most energy friendly. Did you notice that it did not have a power sucking dryer. Instead it had an earth friendly clothes drying rack. As oil gushes into the gulf of Mexico and the world temp continues to rise we need to start designing our spaces with more conservation in mind.

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