Our Small Laundry Room Makeover

Well this post has been almost a year in the making! We pulled the trigger on re-doing our laundry room early last year and completed it right before everything shutdown. I had plans to post everything here on the blog, but honestly just never got around to it. Well better late than never, right? Sharing our small laundry room makeover, along with organization tips to make the space more efficient!

Our laundry room is small, and serves as an entry and exit point from our home into the garage. But it’s a mighty space that works overtime to clean our loads of dirty clothes, a place for storage (especially dog items) and also home to a trusty wine fridge.

I always felt like the space could be maximized to its full-potential with just a few changes and updates. Updating the wall cabinets and adding a fourth box, adding a shelf that spans the wall above the appliances, and a fresh coat of paint has made all the difference, in this once dim and dreary space.

So let’s dive in, and I’ll share a bit more about the project and everything that came with this small laundry room makeover and refresh.

Small Laundry Room Makeover

I never felt like our laundry room was all that functional. Prior to its makeover, we’d been making do with the space for the almost three years we’ve been in our home. Initially it was a nice storage space, but as you can see in the below ‘before photos’ the space looked like it was exploding at the seams.

As a homeowner, I’ve realized I like things to be unseen in my personal home. I love the look of open shelving in magazines, but personally it doesn’t work for me. Case in point, the open shelves we had to the left of our laundry room became an unconfined mess.

The laundry room before

small laundry room makeover before and after

It’s crazy how much time we spend in this space, and we don’t even have kids yet! So I knew with this makeover, I definitely wanted to brighten it up with a fresh coat of white paint, along with amping up the storage factor.

To the right of the dryer, we had this weird cabinet that looked to have a door on it at one point previously, but also looked like it was once ironing board storage. Regardless, we used it for storing dog treats, medicine and food. I always felt like it was an eye-sore, plus things would fall off the shelves if we opened the laundry room door too quickly.

So ultimately, the punch list for our small laundry room makeover included:

Demo’ing the existing cabinets and replacing with new, custom cabinets; Adding two additional cabinet doors for a total of five; Updating hardware
Repainting the entire room
Updating the outdated light fixture
Adding a cabinet door to the tall, built-in storage cabinet
Incorporating a pop of color with a fun backsplash
Adding a shelf for additional counter space across the wall above the appliances

The laundry room after

Laundry room custom cabinets and storage space

Looking at the before and after pictures in one spot really surprises me every single time! No change of floor plan, simply a fresh coat of paint, updated fixtures and custom cabinets made our small laundry room much more functional and pleasant to spend time in.

We opted to have a carpenter build a custom cabinet to our specifications. Along with taking the cabinets up to the ceiling for max storage capacity. As you can see in the before photos, there were three cabinets and one set of shelves.

Our carpenter decided we could optimize the space by making the new custom cabinets taller (to the ceiling), along with an additional depth of 2-3 inches. We scraped the shelves above the wine fridge so the cabinets could stretch across the entire wall. Instead of the previous three cabinet doors, we now have five.

What a difference the additional cabinet storage makes! Instead of my cabinets being stuffed to the brim, I finally have ample storage to keep all my laundry accessories and household extras tucked away, but still within reach.

I utilized these simple clear handled bins from the Container Store to organize my laundry accessories, ironing items and cleaning supplies.

The jute baskets are perfect for storing my more commonly used laundry supplies, plus they’re pretty sitting on the shelf. I love the Laundress products, the sport, dark and light detergents are my favorite and smell amazing. I also bought a glass jar to store our detergent pods on the open shelf.

Because this isn’t our forever home, I didn’t want to get too personalized on different details for our small laundry room makeover. Instead I chose details that would accentuate the space. While also working for a potential buyer’s taste when we ever choose to sell.

We painted the walls Swiss Coffee by Benjamin Moore. I used this white to paint my office and guest bathroom, and love that it’s bright but has some warmth to the shade. Meanwhile, the cabinets and trim are Pure White by Sherwin Williams. By far and away, brightening up the paint color alone made a huge difference in this small laundry room makeover.

The piece de resistance to our laundry room makeover definitely is the hexagon shaped backsplash tile. I found it with my mom, and fell in love with the seafoam color. Of course it wasn’t a necessary addition to our laundry room makeover, but it’s oh so pretty! Plus, it’s a fun pop of color without going too crazy.

We absolutely love our laundry room space, and the makeover has certainly made it functional. Plus, with all the cabinet space, I can stay organized! Looking forward to sharing more home updates in the future, stay tuned.