Creative Roadblocks: What to Do With Trouble Areas in the Home

Every home has those rooms or areas that get left out of the design and décor mix- often because people don’t know what to do with them. Follow our blog in the coming weeks for series of “Creative Roadblocks” that we’ll help you out with. First up- the laundry room!

The Laundry Room:
The laundry room is often a room that homeowners don’t think about. Yet there are simple things that you can do to make it much more functional and maybe even show-worthy! One very helpful addition is to hang a dry bar for those items that have a tendency to shrink and delicates that need to be air-dried. A drying rack only holds a few shirts at most and can look sloppy, but a closet rod mounted on the underside of a laundry-room shelf makes a good spot for a row of shirts on hangers. The rod can also be helpful when you're ironing to hang pressed shirts as you work.  You can see an example of this, and other features, in the photos below from various Brookfield Homes laundry rooms.  They are one of our favorite clients to work for and one of the most creative developers of new homes out there.

Speaking of ironing, the laundry room is a logical place for the ironing board to be stored, but many don’t have closets. Consider having a pullout ironing board built into the wall and you just might find yourself looking forward to the chore. 

So now you’re organized and tidy, but if your laundry room feels a bit dreary, add a brighter paint to the walls such as yellow, green or turquoise. You could also consider a textured vinyl wallpaper to give you a nice, tonal texture in the room. If you do go with color on the walls, keep trim, counters and the backspash looking clean with a color like white.  Laundry rooms are busy enough with clothes everywhere, so keep your design simple. I like Caesarstone counter tops instead of granite because it creates a more uniform look. Also make sure you have adequate lighting.

Brookfield Homes builds great functional features and clean design into their laundry rooms.  Check out the rest of the homes in their Colony Park Anaheim development: www.livecolonypark.com.  And, as always, if you need help with your laundry room you know that we're here for you at Chameleon Design!