Your laundry doesn’t belong in your house

There’s a room in your home that gets used almost every single day of the year. It generates noise, heat, moisture, and clutter. It’s often squeezed into the most awkward corner like an afterthought. And in some cases, it’s competing with your actual living areas and taking up valuable space that could be put to better use.

We’re talking about the laundry.

For a room that gets such a workout, it’s remarkable how little thought most floorplans dedicate to it. Often too small to work in comfortably, an impractical distance from the clothesline, overflowing into hallways, kitchens or living areas…

So, when you’re folding laundry on the dining table for the third time this week, consider this.

There’s a much better way.

Why your current laundry isn’t working

Most Australian homes weren’t designed with the laundry front of mind – or even considered. It tends to end up wherever it can fit, or simply placed close to other plumbing infrastructure: next to the bathroom, wedged near the back door, the other side of the kitchen wall, or worse still, tucked into a hallway cupboard.

They’re rarely big enough to use efficiently, often with just enough space for the appliances, a sink and a cupboard. Sorting and folding spills out to any available surfaces around the house – usually the dining table or kitchen bench. In winter, washing is draped over a clotheshorse in the lounge, and wet towels hung over chairs. Then there’s the noise – the spin cycle on the washing machine, the constant hum of the dryer. It’s a room you just can’t seem to escape from.

There’s also another problem that often gets overlooked. The laundry is, by design, one of the most moisture-intensive spaces in your home. Every time you run a wash or dryer cycle, your laundry generates significant heat and humidity. When this room is inside your house, often poorly ventilated and sandwiched between other living spaces, think about where that moisture is going. It seeps into walls, ceilings, skirtings, adjoining rooms. Add clothes drying inside, and you’re just compounding the problem.

In homes where space is precious, the laundry isn’t just a noisy, damp nuisance. It’s usually occupying space that could serve a far better purpose for the family, or it has borrowed space from a neighbouring room – often the bathroom or kitchen – leaving both smaller than they should, or could, be. And it’s the one room in the house that you don’t want to spend time in, yet follows you into every room that you do!

Creating an outdoor laundry

An outdoor laundry relocates everything associated with laundry – the appliances, the trough, the ironing board, the storage, the folding bench, the hanging space – into a separate purpose-built room in your backyard. Outside the house and away from the living areas where noise, heat, and moisture currently cause havoc for family life.

It’s a simple idea, but what it gives back is significant.

Reclaim space inside

The room your laundry currently occupies could become something genuinely more useful. A dedicated home office or a proper study for the kids. A walk-in wardrobe or kitchen pantry.

But without doubt, the most common reason we hear for relocating a laundry is to achieve a second bathroom or ensuite. In homes where the bathroom and laundry share a wall (or worse, the same room), separating them to create a larger bathroom is also transformative. And practically speaking, it’s so easy to do, with all the plumbing right there and ready to go.

Adding floor space with an extension costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Freeing up an existing room inside your home – the laundry making the most sense – is one of the most cost-effective moves you can make, while adding real value to your home.

Moisture, heat, and noise move outside

When the laundry is outside in a well-built and thoughtfully ventilated separate room, the inevitable condensation, damp air, and steam vent naturally into the open air – not your walls, ceilings and neighbouring rooms. In return, your home stays drier, healthier, and easier to maintain.

The noisy rattle of the spin cycle, the churning of the tumble dryer, the clunk as the washing machine dances across the floor mid-cycle…it’s all confined to your garden, unheard while you watch TV, eat dinner, work from home or sleep.

Put a load on, close the door, and walk back into a calm, quiet, dry house.

Space and storage

Once the laundry moves outside, you have room to do it…and do it properly. A generous bench top at working height. A deep trough for soaking. Lots of storage for washing, supplies, and linens. Room to put up your ironing board, room to move, room to hang, and room to fold. Enough space for a clotheshorse or washing line on rainy days. And absolutely none of this encroaching on the living space inside your home.

The outdoor laundry doesn’t just solve multiple problems. Dare we say it? It can turn one of the most thankless and time-consuming household chores into something actually enjoyable!

Close to the clothesline

It’s one of life’s great mysteries – for some reason, many indoor laundries seem to be situated as far from the clothesline as it’s possible to get!

An outdoor laundry, by its very nature, is the exact opposite. And that means no more hauling a heavy basket of wet clothes, sheets, and towels through the kitchen, out the back door, and across the garden. Instead, imagine opening the laundry door onto an adjacent washing line where wet washing can be hung out in moments, gathered in just as easily when dry, and all of it done without the backache.

How much space do you need? 

It might be less than you think, while gaining more than you expect.

A 2.4m x 3.6m garden room is a comfortable and practical starting point. This gives you ample space for your appliances, a bench and laundry trough, good storage, and plenty of room to move around freely.

If you’re thinking bigger – perhaps a laundry combined with a bathroom, extra storage space, or a room that doubles up for whatever the household needs – that’s absolutely achievable too. The Melwood range isn’t just available in different designs. It’s also available in sizes up to around 60m2, and in various heights, so there’s a building to suit every vision. Some Greenspan customers, like Christine, have built a multi-purpose outdoor room that incorporates a laundry as one of several functions within a single, well-designed building.

The point is simple: you decide what you need, and the building is designed around you. Your perfect size, design, colours, cladding, windows and doors, plus all the little (and big) details that make it truly yours.

The perfect outdoor laundry 

A great outdoor laundry is properly designed, engineered, and built like a proper room – because that’s what it is.

The perfect outdoor laundry is also spacious, welcoming, thoughtfully laid out and, done right, a genuinely enjoyable place to be.

This all starts with the right building – a high-quality, fully weatherproof, well-insulated garden room. One where every detail has been considered – from aesthetics to practicalities – and personalised to suit. Not a shed with a washing machine pushed into it, but a dedicated, purpose-built laundry like the one in your house, just bigger, better, and in your backyard.

From there, it’s about thinking through how you actually use the space.

The essentials are waterproofing, tiling and plumbing, your washing machine and dryer (stacked saves floor space if the room is compact), a deep laundry trough, and good storage for detergents, cloths, and supplies. Strategically positioned doors and windows that support airflow and cross-ventilation are worth thinking about from the outset, too.

The practical additions that make every wash day easier include a bench at your ideal working height, drawers or baskets for sorting, hanging rail space for crease-free clothes, and linen storage if you’re planning on moving towels and bedding outside too.

The extras that make it an exceptional space might include a toilet or bathroom, a music system or wall-mounted TV to keep you entertained while you sort, fold, or iron, or even a comfortable chair where you can snatch a moment of peace surrounded by the smell of fresh linen.

Done well and done right, an outdoor laundry isn’t just functional. It can become one of your favourite places to be!

Take a look at Vicki’s – a backyard oasis where doing the laundry is a pleasure, not a chore, complete with a luxury bathroom for a little spa-like indulgence.

Do you need approval for an outdoor laundry?

Building a garden room for use as a laundry is very likely easier than you imagine.

Under the National Construction Code (NCC) – the national building standard that governs how homes in Australia are designed and built – a laundry is officially classified as a non-habitable room.

The NCC defines a habitable room as one “used for normal domestic activities” and then explicitly lists what that excludes: “a bathroom, laundry, water closet, pantry, walk-in wardrobe, corridor, hallway, lobby, photographic darkroom, clothes-drying room, and other spaces of a specialised nature occupied neither frequently nor for extended periods.”

As such, we have seen regulatory bodies recognise that an outdoor laundry isn’t really a living space, rather a utility room – a functional necessity, but not somewhere you’re expected to spend meaningful time.

In Australia, the approval pathway for a non-habitable Class 10a building is significantly simpler than it is for habitable structures and, as we’ve just seen, an outdoor laundry is typically accepted as being in this category.

This means that depending on your state, property, and the specific details of your outdoor laundry, it may qualify for a streamlined approval process and, in some cases, as exempt development, which means no council approval is required at all.

Every property is different, and the specific standards depend on your lot size, zoning, and local conditions. This is exactly the kind of navigation our team can help you with – we’ve been doing it across NSW (and Australia) for five decades.

Is it worth the investment?

This is an important question to ask yourself before undertaking any home improvement, and for an outdoor laundry, the answer is almost always yes.

There are multiple reasons why adding an outdoor laundry is a good investment – and not just financially.

You gain a properly functional laundry that works better than anything you could realistically fit inside the house. You reclaim a room indoors that can serve a far more valuable purpose. You remove an everyday source of noise, mess, and clutter from your living areas. And you add a quality, purpose-built structure to your property that, in most cases, immediately contributes to its long-term value.

For Australian families in smaller homes with growing households, an outdoor laundry isn’t an indulgence. It’s one of the most practical, cost-effective home upgrades you can do… and one of the easiest!

---