2019 Trends for a Chicago Laundry Room Remodel

Ready to design or renovate a laundry room that flows better with your home and lifestyle? Here are some of the laundry room trends that will make your laundry room achieve peak functionality along with a stylish and eye-catching design.

1. (Nearly) indestructible quartz countertops

Each year, the team at Consumer Reports puts a range of countertop materials to the test. In addition to looks (or perhaps, even more important than looks), they compare how countertops hold up to heat, impact, scratches, stain-able ingredients, chipping and cracking, etc.

This year, they named quartz their #1 countertop choice for kitchens - and all the reasons they cited means this is the #1 countertop material choice for laundry rooms, too. When you think of all the laundry detergent, bleach, cleaning products etc., that might leak, spill, accumulate and/or collect on laundry room surfaces - you’ll be glad you chose quartz.

2. Any color goes

This is a great time to remodel kitchens and baths because it feels like just about any color goes. While some laundry room designers swear by all-white designs or timeless design tenets similar to those chosen for the kitchen, we find the laundry room (like the powder room) is a great space for choosing “outside your typical box,” using bold, fun colors or patterns you might shy away from in more public rooms in the house.

3. The laundry room island

If you have a larger laundry room space, you have the ability to consider workflow, similar to the way you did for your kitchen. If the space is large enough, consider installing a laundry room island that can be used for folding, drying sweaters and delicate garments flat, pet grooming and sewing and mending projects. With a little more forethought in design and storage, the laundry room island can also serve as a craft or homework station.

4. Make it pet friendly

Speaking of pet grooming, many homeowners consider their laundry room a mud room, and incorporate pet-friendly spaces and surfaces that accommodate everything from storage spaces for food, toys and grooming tools, ground-level washing stations (also handy for muddy children or feet/hands fresh from the garden), sleeping cubbies, feeding stations and so on.

5. Optimized storage

All of the same innovative storage tips and tricks that apply to kitchens translate well for laundry rooms. Instead of a pull-out pantry, you may prefer a pull-out drying rack and ironing board. Cabinets, shelves and drawers can all be customized to accommodate the items you store in your laundry room/mud room, from laundry-relevant cleaning products and boxes of fabric softener sheets to household cleaning solutions, brooms/mops/dust pans, hidden electrical outlets for charging cord-free vacuums and so on.

You may even find you prefer to design a household gadget charging station here, rather than in more accessible locations, using the out-of-sight, out-of-mind idea during dinner, homework and sleepy times.

Are you interested in turning your laundry room into a space that brims with productivity while simultaneously making a style-worthy impact? Schedule a consultation with Kitchens Baths & Unlimited.