To think the laundry room can be away from the kitchen!??

[Wishwashing]

As it says really we are building a house, currently in the design stage. And I am adamant that I want the laundry room next to the main bathroom ( on the bedroom side of the house) BUT everyone keeps making faces like I’m insane and saying it needs to be up near the kitchen!! WHY would I carry my laundry to the kitchen side of the house to just bring it back again!! Tell me I’m not crazy!! It makes complete sense to me to keep it separate! There would be a door on the laundry with access to the garden too!

So what about line drying your clothes in the garden? I'm perfectly happy with my 'weird' laundry set up in the kitchen and right by the back door. I would rather have a utility room next to the kitchen but upstairs or next to bedrooms ...madness!

@tenbob

It absolutely is a fire hazard. The London fire service warn this as one of the greatest hazards and most frequent call outs.

Washing machines of the worst offender of the appliances - worse than tumble driers. They cause 30x more fires than irons, and 7x more fires than electric blankets and almost 2x as many fires as ovens and cookers.

Op’s Laundry room has a door to the garden I believe.

For us, the kitchen isn’t near a door or the garden so I have to carry washing through the house to hang out anyway. So although that doesn’t change, when it rains (which it does a lot in Cornwall) I’m gaining on not having to carry it down just to carry it straight up again when I use the drier.

There’s also room for an airer in the bathroom and it’s next door to the airing cupboard. It works for us.

When I was a teenager I stayed with a very well off family, their laundry room was upstairs next to the bedrooms, because why bring clothes downstairs if you don't need to I guess?! They dried all their clothes in dryers I guess, they had an ironing station in there. They built their home too so not sure if common or their decision!

Sorry meant to say well off family in the US!

Why is it more a hazard to have your washing machine in a bathroom than in a kitchen?

Faulty appliances do cause fires, but we should be be enforcing better recall schemes and shaming manufacturers who tolerate this. No one wants to sit in a noisy kitchen watching their washing machine in case it catches fire.

my laundry room is beside our bathroom. It should be a 4th bedroom but it works better as our laundry room for now

Is it more of a hazard to have it in the bathroom? I wouldn't think so. The issue is that this machine (like dishwashers) combines water and electricity, the potential for fire is high. So long as you're awake when it's running and cognisent of any issues then it shouldn't be a problem if it's in kitchen or bathroom :) In fact I'd think bathroom was better as that room already has a drain in place in case of leakage.

I'm with the others on this. Put it where the most content comes from. If 100% use is laundry of course. Some folks pop it in the utility as utility covers muddy boots etc and it is a spare space. But if you are designing from scratch Have both! Pop a tv in there so you can watch antiques road show whilst ironing on a Sunday evening. Heaven.

I think we don’t have them in the bathroom in the uk due to the safety laws about power supplies in bathrooms.

I like the idea of having the laundry room upstairs near where the dirty laundry is generated, except we hang out washing up outside. I think the reason they are more usual in the US is that some areas have by-laws which don’t allow clothes lines outside in gardens (I saw this fact on tv, so it must be true ;) ) so everything is dried in the dryer instead.

I’d like a laundry chute but I can’t get past seeing it as a potential motorway for mice etc

We are building a new house and the utility room is at one side of the house and the kitchen is at the other - it means more storage space in the kitchen for starters. Yay!

I’ve always called our utility room the utility room, but it’s only got laundry stuff in it. What defines a utility room as a utility room? What other does it have to do than laundry?

Mine's in the basement and I hate it being there.

If I rebuilt this house I'd put a washer and dryer in the dressing room, which is where all the clothes are kept anyway.

I don't line dry though. Browntail moth a lot of the year, then deep snow and ice the rest of the year.

Mine is beside the bedrooms and main bathroom.It's got an external door so it's great for accessing the clothes line and sometimes it's great to just air it to get rid of all the dusty tumble dryer stuff.Being able to open the door to the outside, shut the internal door and just let it air has been great. There's a trend locally for utility rooms to be entered directly via the back door and that wouldn't have worked for me as it's a tipping ground really.