In the Home: Beautifying the Laundry Room
I think of all the house chores, laundry has got to be the most undesirable of the bunch. The lugging it around, the sifting, the folding and especially the putting away… laundry and I are just not a very compatible pair.
In our new home, I allocated one of the smaller rooms as my laundry room and we had a new washer and dryer installed in there, and since last summer when we moved in, I hadn’t touched the room design-wise. And then I figured, if I’m in here almost every day, why not make it a space that I enjoy being in, if not for anything, at least it’s a space that’s bright and beautiful. And I set out to do just that!
Since it’s not a very big room, I didn’t want to fill it with too much, and because both the washer and dryer have top doors that open upwards, I couldn’t install any sort of build-ins above the machines.
The Details
I set out to find a table of some sort that would hold all of the accessories: the detergent, the softener, stain spray, etc. I found this tray table at Home Sense and thought it was just beyond gorgeous! I loved the flora design on it, and decided that I would design the entire room as this table as the inspiration. The room was already painted a blue that I actually happened to like a lot, that perfect “French blue.” I found a blue and white polka-dot fabric at the fabric store and made cafe curtains for the window, and then continued that curtain design onto the wall behind the washer and dryer which functionally worked out wonderfully because it hid the holes in the wall that were made for the tubes and wires, but also worked with the design pretty seamlessly. I had these floral prints and thought they would look so pretty against the blue wall, and I chose to frame them inside shadow boxes instead of regular frames because it sort of matched the theme. And then added this ribbon detail behind the framed prints with a knotted detail at the bottom and these adorable rattan drawer pulls that I screwed into the wall as decorative knobs.
One of my favorite parts of this room are the laundry goodies… for the detergent, the liquid bleach and the softener, I poured into these cute jugs. I found these pretty porcelain sugar bowls with the little birdies on them, and they hold the baking powder and the whitening powder that I like to use for my towels and sheets. And probably the most used item on this table is the stain spray, so I poured it into this pretty spray bottle that I found at Target.
One thing that was a must-have in this room was a drying rack, but it had to be a pretty drying rack… naturally. I found this accordion-like rack at Hobby Lobby and hung it to the height that would allow me to hang sheets and bedding from it without them touching the floor. As this room sees a lot of action, and is rarely as empty as this during the week, I wanted the smaller details to make a big impact, but keep the furniture and bigger pieces to a minimum if not anything at all. I love that this one little tray table was the inspiration behind the rest of the room and has truly made this plain space quite beautiful. My relationship with laundry will probably never change, but at least when I’m in my space, I can enjoy it thoroughly!
BEFORE
AFTER
