Laundry Design In Accessible Housing
Laundry is one of the daily tasks most often taken over by support staff, and frequently because of the room rather than the resident. Front loaders at the right height, a clear approach and somewhere to put wet washing make the difference.
What makes a laundry usable in an accessible dwelling?
A front loading machine, ideally raised so the door sits at a reachable height, clear floor space in front for a wheelchair to approach and turn, a bench at an accessible height beside it, reachable taps and controls, and a door that does not swing into the clear space. Top loaders are unusable from a seated position.
Laundry appears in almost every discussion of independent living and almost never in discussions of dwelling design, where it is usually the smallest space with the most fittings in it.
For a resident who could do their own washing, the room is frequently the reason they do not.
The machine decides most of it
**A front loader, not a top loader.** A top loading machine cannot be loaded or unloaded from a seated position, and no amount of clear space fixes that.
**Raised, if the resident is seated,** so the door opening sits within a comfortable reach rather than at floor level. A plinth or a bench-mounted position does this, and it has to be designed rather than improvised, because a machine on a plinth needs restraint and a plumbing arrangement that suits the height.
**With controls a resident can operate,** which means dials or buttons they can see, reach and feel, rather than a flush glass panel.
**A dryer at a reachable height,** which for a seated resident usually means side by side rather than stacked, because a stacked dryer door is too high.
Side by side takes more width than stacked, which is a plan decision made early and not easily changed later.
Clear space and approach
A resident in a wheelchair needs space in front of the machine to approach it, open the door, transfer washing and turn around.
Which is a defined clear area, not whatever is left over. A laundry designed as a cupboard at the end of a hallway fails this regardless of what is in it.
Door swings matter here more than anywhere. A hinged door into a small laundry consumes the clear space it needs. A sliding or cavity door does not.
The bench
Somewhere to put washing down is what makes the sequence possible: out of the machine, onto a surface, sorted, into the dryer or the basket.
Without it, every item is handled twice and some of it on the floor.
The bench sits at an accessible height, has clear space underneath for a seated approach where that suits the resident, and is deep enough to be useful. The same reach principles as the [kitchen](/blog/kitchens-and-joinery-in-a-factory-build) apply.
Taps, tub and drainage
A tub is useful and not always necessary. Where there is one, the taps are reachable from where the resident sits or stands, with lever handles rather than tap tops.
A floor waste is worth having, because a laundry is a wet area and a resident who spills a bucket should not be dealing with a flood.
Where it sits in the dwelling
**Not the far corner.** A laundry at the end of the longest path in the house is a laundry that gets used by staff.
**Near a drying option,** meaning a door to a clothesline that the resident can actually reach and use, which is a [private open space](/blog/private-open-space-in-accessible-housing) question.
**Considered for group houses,** where several residents and staff share one laundry, and the demands on it are different from a single dwelling. Two machines is frequently the right answer, and it has to be planned for in the services.
The factory advantage
Laundry joinery, plumbing and the machine position are set out and built to the drawing, indoors, with the plumbing and electrical coordinated before lining.
Which matters because a laundry is a small space with a high density of services in it, and it is the kind of room where site-built compromise shows up as a machine thirty millimetres too close to a wall to open properly.
MADEmodular / MADEbetter.
MADEmodular / MADEbetter.