In builder Orren Pickell’s high-end homes, owners are barring the laundry room door no more.
For about five years, says selections coordinator Sondra Latiolais, buyers of the Lincolnshire, Ill., builder’s luxury custom homes have been lusting for laundry rooms that are fancier than their kitchens—and their kitchens are fabulous.
Indeed, estimates Latiolais, 95 percent of Pickell’s clients ask for a laundry room that’s big, flooded with light, full of personality, and crammed with high-end, cutting-edge appliances and customized cabinetry.
They’re beyond lugging loads of laundry to dank basements two or three stories below the source of their soiled socks and skivvies—the master bedroom. They want their laundry rooms next to their first-floor kitchens or upstairs near the bedrooms where they dress. Some of them want two. And they all want to show them off to company.
“The lady who stays home enjoys a laundry room that looks nice,” says Latiolais, who notes that the builder’s remodeling clients are burning big bucks to have their tiny laundry rooms enlarged and fitted with custom shelving.
They’re not the only ones. In a 2004 survey by the NAHB, 95 percent of homeowners said a separate laundry room is desirable or essential; 92 percent said they would rather have a laundry room than an exercise room, a library, or another niche nook.
It’s no wonder: In a Sears, Roebuck and Co. survey last year, 55 percent of women homeowners said they craved a laundry room makeover, complaining their laundry rooms are too small or cluttered, disorganized or poorly decorated. And more than one-third said they would pay up to $2,000 for the upgrade (21 percent would pay more).
“Most homeowners are unhappy in their laundry rooms and they are ready, willing, and able to do something about it,” notes Tina Settecase, Sears’ vice president and general manager of appliances.
Above all, that “something” involves moving the laundry room out of the bowels of the house so it’s located in a more convenient place. Research from Whirlpool reveals that 55 percent of laundry rooms are on the first floor of the home. “People have more living areas and they don’t want [the laundry room] to be this dark, dingy area,” says Audrey Reed-Granger, director of public relations for Whirlpool.
The smallest laundry rooms JH Carter Builder’s Raleigh, N.C., clients will settle for are 10 by 12 feet; some are going as large as 10 by 20 feet, says co-owner Peggy Carter.
