Small Narrow Laundry Room Ideas That Keep the Walkway Clear

Put the machines and everything deep on one long wall

Fixes: an aisle that pinchesWall cabinets take no floor

The simplest long narrow laundry room layout gives one long wall to everything deep: the washer, the dryer and any base cabinet or sink beside them. Line up their fronts, so the walkway stays the same width from the door to the far end, with no corner to catch a basket on.

The water lines, the drain and the dryer vent usually pick that wall for you, and moving them is a job for a pro. Cabinets or shelves above the machines use the same wall and take no floor at all; our storage guide covers what to put up there.

Have a top-load washer? Lift its lid all the way open before you hang anything above it. Every cabinet and shelf has to clear the open lid, or the lid will hit it each time you load.

Try this: stand in the doorway and look down the room. Anything that sticks out past the machine fronts is the spot where a basket will catch.

Fold on top of the machines, not in the walkway

Fixes: folding on the bedNeeds two front-loaders side by side

A folding table needs floor, and in a narrow room the only floor is the walkway. The tops of a side-by-side pair are already there. Our counter for two front-loaders side by side rests on rubber pads on those tops, with no bolts, brackets or wall mounting, and the product page says the pads hold it in place through spin cycles.

Measured from the wall, the counter is 27.5 or 30 inches deep, and the sizing guide explains that it should stop at or just behind the control panel. The depth a maker prints for a machine counts its door and control panel, so the flat top is shorter than that number. Pick a counter shallower than your flat top, and nothing reaches past the machine fronts: the walkway stays as wide as it was.

Raised edges along the back and both sides stop socks and dryer sheets from sliding into the gap behind the machines, a gap that is hard to reach when there is no room to pull a washer out. The front stays open for folding and loading, and the whole counter lifts off when you need the hoses. The board itself is engineered wood with a laminate top, a hard surface bonded on with heat.

Try this: measure the flat part of one machine top, from the wall to where the control panel starts, and hold that number up against the two counter depths.

Find where the washer door lands before you fill the other wall

Fixes: a door that hits the shelvesCheck the room's own door too

A front-load door swings out into the walkway. LG lists its WM4000HWA washer at 30 1/4 inches deep with the door shut and 55 inches with it open, so the open door reaches about 24 3/4 inches past the front of the machine. Keep that patch of floor free of hampers and carts, and keep low shelves off the wall right across from it.

Then open the room's own door while the washer door is open. If the two meet, you lose the start of the aisle every wash day. A room door that swings out into the hall, or one that slides along the wall, gives that floor back.

Try this: open the washer door until it sticks out farthest into the room, then stick a strip of tape on the floor under its outer edge. Nothing should live on the floor between that tape and the machine.

Keep the opposite wall shallow

Fixes: turning sideways to passHooks and rails sit flat

Every inch of shelf on the wall across from the machines comes out of the walkway. So pick things that sit close to that wall: hooks for the ironing board, the step stool and the laundry bags, a rail for hangers, and narrow open shelves for folded towels, like the ones set into the wall in the render at the top of this page.

If something there has to be deep, like a cabinet, hang it high, where it clears the open washer door and your shoulders as you walk by.

Try this: before you buy shelves, carry a full laundry basket on your hip down the aisle. Anywhere you have to turn sideways gets hooks, not shelves.

Shopping for machines? Compare how deep they are

Fixes: losing aisle to a deep pairGood for: a new washer and dryer

Width is the easy part, since most front-loaders are 27 inches wide. Depth is where they differ: across the 54-inch pairs in our sizing guide, it runs from 30 1/4 to 34 1/2 inches. The deepest pair takes 4 1/4 more inches of your walkway than the shallowest, before anyone opens a door.

Look for two numbers on each spec sheet: the depth with the door shut and the depth with it open. LG prints both for the WM4000HWA. Compacts are shallower: Bosch lists its compact washer at 24 1/4 inches deep and the matching dryer at 25.

Try this: take the door-shut depth of each model on your list away from the width of your room. What is left is your aisle on wash day: aim for at least 30 inches, the standing room explained in the 4-foot section below, and check that the door-open depth fits as well.

Laundry in a narrow hallway: plan for the open door

Fixes: a door that blocks the hallOne finished top

When the washer and dryer stand along a hallway, the hall is the walkway, and everyone in the house uses it. The open washer door can close the hall off: on the LG washer in idea 3 it reaches about 24 3/4 inches past the machine, so in a narrow hall it can block the way while you load. Do the tape test from idea 3, then load and unload in one go and shut the door.

Keep bottles in a cabinet or on a shelf above, and carry baskets through rather than parking them on the hall floor. On a side-by-side front-load pair, a counter gives the hall one finished top instead of two bare machine tops. Closets behind doors get their own guide.

Try this: give each person's basket a hook or a shelf in the room where it gets used, so no basket waits in the hall.