Does a utility room NEED to be next to the kitchen?

[NicFairy]

What are the advantages of having a utility room directly off the kitchen? Ours will be used mainly for dirty laundry and also a boot room / room for the dog when he’s muddy from walks (it will have an external door leading to the garden).

When we extend, we will be converting the narrow garage space that runs down one side of the house, so we would have room for a narrow but long utility room and a downstairs shower room and WC, running alongside the hallway. We have two potential layout options: shower room at the front of the house, utility room behind that, leading onto the kitchen. Or: utility room at the front of the house, with shower room sandwiched in between utility room and kitchen.

The reason I’m pondering putting the utility room at the front, is because then we could have a front facing window, which we wouldn’t have if we put the shower room there (privacy! Not sure about a shower room
with front facing window leading straight onto our front drive) Perhaps a front facing window on that side isn’t important, but I’m having trouble picturing it without the front elevation looking a bit weird and unsymmetrical if there isn’t a window there?

So, would it be an awful idea to not have the utility room next to the kitchen? (It would be only about 2 metres further away down the hallway). We’ve never had a utility room before so I can’t work out the practical advantages of having it leading directly off the kitchen. We would have a big pantry and sink in the kitchen so I can’t see the utility being used much for kitchen storage and overspill. The only thing I can think of at the moment is that it would be nice to have the dog room leading directly off the kitchen so that we can contain the dog to the back of the house.

Any insight or wisdom on these two potential layouts would be appreciated!

@Yubaba ooh that’s a good layout to combine both rooms. Unfortunately I don’t think ours is quite wide enough to do it that way, it’s about 160cm wide so would be a bit of a squeeze.

We won’t have a pantry room off the kitchen when we do the build, but we will have a pantry cupboard or two in the kitchen and all food prep and washing will be done in the kitchen.

Would love an upstairs laundry room but no space on the first floor, and also need the utility room to have garden access for the dog so it has to be ground floor.

All makes sense.

I'm Australian and nearly all homes have a utility room (laundry) but I can't think of many homes that have the laundry next to the kitchen. Most homes they are separated by hallway. The laundry is accessed by a side/rear door to the back garden so you can easily hang washing or leave dirty boots, empty buckets etc. I think you need to think more about the access than the positioning of it being close to kitchen.

My utility room is a converted garage, you have to go outside to access it. I hardly ever use the tumble dryer so it's useful for hanging out the washing and also means muddy boots and clothes are never in the house.

In our old house the utility was off the kitchen and it always ended up being an overflow for the kitchen.

We don’t have a utility room; we have a boot room. Much more useful for rural living. Not next to the kitchen, but with direct access from rear hallway.
It house wet weather gear, Wellington boots, dog coat and leads etc. It has a good sized Belfast for mucky washing, houses washing machine, drier and freezer, plus drinks fridge. It has store cupboard for glasses for drinks plus dog food etc. It is adjacent to lavatory for garden and has a dog shower.

We blocked off our utility door into the kitchen (there was 2 doors) around six years ago when doing remodelling works. The door we left is near front of house and beside stairs, cloakroom toilet/ front door. To me it makes much more sense as I’m close to stairs for taking laundry back and forth and also no food smells going in clean clothing. We also use it as a cloakroom although it is too small so intend when we extend to increase this area substantially and combine with a new side door, so all laundry, coats, jackets, bike helmets etc, household cleaning stuff - hoover etc, are contained within one closed door space, albeit zoned.
I think the link to a kitchen for utility rooms purely came about due to plumbing, not because of functionality.

Our Utility room is on the ground floor, door to garden and washing line. Kitchen on the first floor (town house). Not an issue that they are separate. I just have to take the clean clothes up two floors to the bedrooms (but that is what teenagers are for).

Ours is at the opposite end of the house to the kitchen but you can access the back garden from it. Wasn’t really by design that it’s there but we converted half of our double garage into a utility room as there was nowhere else one could go.

I like that it’s not next to the kitchen personally as we store dog food and dog blankets in there, football boots and wellies so would hate having that right next to the kitchen. I like that it feels separate from the house so when it looks like a disaster zone (most of the time!) I can close the door and ignore it.

There are some new builds near us that have the utility and downstairs loo away from the kitchen but off the main hallway. It was near to the bottom.of the stairs which made sense to me and I quite liked it. It worked for the layout of the house. I america, having a laundry room is usually upstairs anyway.

Mine is upstairs!
Never have to carry laundry up and down. Genius.

The house we're due to move into next week has a utility that isn't connected to the kitchen and doesn't bother us in the slightest. It will mainly be for laundry and houses washing machine and tumble dryer - can't understand why I'd need to take all DS' clothes to kitchen otherwise so makes no difference. It will house things like clothes airer plus dog food and whilst it has a sink, the only thing I think that'll be used for is filling up dog water bowls!

I think it very much depends how you are going to use it and how large, what storage etc your kitchen has.

My utility room is at the other end of the house to my kitchen. I use it as
A laundry room with washing machine/dryer/ironing Board and storage for what I would call gardening coats, boots shoes etc and also I have large cupboards to store garden furniture cushions.

I have enough storage in the kitchen so there is no need for me to keep kitchen type items in the utility room.

So to summarise, it very much depends on how you will use it and whether you have sufficient storage in your kitchen.

We've had the dishwasher in the utility to before as that's where the plumbing was... But if you are designing your layout from scratch that sort of odd issue won't be a problem. (Technically it could have gone in the kitchen... But you wouldn't have been able to open it because of the radiator... Whoever designed that kitchen messed up massively!)

If it's a purely a laundry room it doesn't need to be near the kitchen.

(A tip from our house in Germany I would replicate if we had space/money... The washer and drier were raised up, on a solid plinth by about a foot. So much easier to load and unload!)

Agree with people who advice you to think about how YOU going to use it.

Another thing for you to think about is if you want your shower room (presumably with a toilet) near the kitchen, there could be smell and sounds coming from it.
Another point to having utility at the back is to have access outdoors (think drying laundry, washing boots and cat litter trays, etc.)

Ours is off our downstairs shower room. Its essentially a laundry room. I have cupboards in it to store medicines, batteries, shoe polish etc. Works really well.

If you will also be using it for a boot room and especially for muddy dogs after a walk, then having it near the front (if that’s the entrance you’ll be using) makes the mor amount of sense. Who would really want muddy boots and wet dogs traipse through the house?

In my ideal house, I’d have such a room near an entrance I would be using so shoes come of, wash the dog etc. I can well remember my son’s mucky rugby kit being traipsed through the house and still have a scratch in my fridge/freezer from him repeatedly knocking his large kit bag into the fridge en route to the laundry room.

Ours is down some steps and across the back lobby from the kitchen. It isn't a problem and it means the washing machine can't be heard, even on full spin in the middle of the night.

@LongTimeMammaBear Yes big priority for the utility room is for muddy dogs / boots after walks and sports. There will be a door to our side return from the utility so we will be able to enter the room from the garden and also from the front of the house via the side gate.

But whether the utility goes right at the front of the house or a bit further towards the back, the utility door to the outside will be roughly in the same place, give or take a metre or two. Essentially, we'll have good access to the garden for hanging washing, and to the front of the house for muddy access without traipsing it all through the open plan kitchen or front hallway. Plus shower room right next door for muddy kids.

Here's a rough layout I've been playing with for when we extend. Plan is for half the long narrow utility to be for laundry / clean items and the other half to be for boots / dogs / muddy item storage.

If I swap the shower room and utility around then I can have a front facing window and the room can be a bit more versatile / future proofed in case we or future owners want to change the use of the room to maybe a very small study.

Alternatively, we keep this layout with utility closer to the kitchen. Also the option to have the internal utility door coming off the kitchen on the narrow wall at the top, rather than from the hallway, although it would have to be a normal door rather than a sliding / pocket door if we did that as the width of the room is too narrow for one.

That layout looks great, but in your shoes I would consider cutting the long utility in half (at least with a partition if not a full wall) and having it as separate boot and laundry rooms. I wouldn’t want to be doing laundry in the same room as muddy stuff (if there is the option not to). Especially as your utility wouldn’t be big enough for ironing anyway.

My utility is not next to the kitchen. Never even considered this to be honest either before or after having it put in ? 🤔

Ours isn't. its in the extended part of the house past the dining room . Works fine as no one would go there except us.

@minipe yes, we might partition those sections. I want to build the shell and get a feel for the space before I decide on that. It does need to be a reasonably big size for the dog to hang out in whilst he's drying out, and not sure I want to end up with a glorified utility cupboard rather than a space that feels like a room. Clean laundry will be stored in the space opposite, under the stairs (planning to build a linen cupboard there), so it's only really dirty clothes and the machines that will be in that room.