PublishedJan 19, 2023 1:20 AM EST
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For ages, kitchen design has worshipped the work triangle: sink, fridge, stove, all within arm's reach. But what if we added a fourth corner? Picture a work square where you can sauté onions and toss in a load of darks without missing a beat. Welcome to the wild world of kitchen laundry.
City dwellers have been stashing washers and dryers in kitchens forever, usually because square footage is a luxury and walls are a suggestion. Sure, a dedicated laundry room is the dream, but when that's not happening, the kitchen makes surprising sense—it's already plumbed and it's where you spend most of your time anyway. Imagine tossing in a load of towels and then stirring pasta sauce without changing rooms. We rounded up six clever kitchen-laundry combos that prove appliances really can be friends.
The easiest way to make your washer and dryer disappear is to tuck them inside a tall cabinet. In this Austin guesthouse, designer Marie Flanigan hid a basic white laundry center behind dark wood doors. When closed, they look like they lead to a pantry—minus the snacks, unfortunately.
Studio McGee used a similar trick with two stacked doors, so you can open just the bottom one if that's all you need. They also squeezed in a small shelf at the very top for detergent and other laundry-day essentials.
For side-by-side front-loaders, pocket doors are a game changer—especially in a narrow galley kitchen like this one by OAK Design Project. The doors slide right into the cabinetry, so one person can do laundry while another cooks without doing an awkward hallway dance.
If hiding feels like too much work, go minimalist and shove the machines in a corner. After rearranging the fridge in their Boerum Hill apartment, Jeremiah Corley and Anthony Espino splurged on a GE washer with a reversible door so it wouldn't open directly into the wall. Sometimes the best design hack is just avoiding door collisions.
Side-by-side units eat up lower cabinets, so take a page from food blogger Christine Han and her fiancé, Joon: hang your pots and pans on the wall. It frees up storage and gives your kitchen that "I definitely cook often" look.
For a happy medium, check out Kate Voegele's setup from We the Dreamers. She wrapped her bulky white machines in a waterfall butcher block countertop, hiding hoses and cords while adding a gorgeous wood surface. Now the same spot works for folding laundry and chopping vegetables—just maybe not at the exact same time.
Lydia Geisel has been on the editorial team at Domino since 2017. Today, she writes and edits home and renovation stories, including house tours, before and afters, and DIYs, and leads our design news coverage. She lives in New York City.
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