Loads of Luxury

By Lisa Cullen

Suzanne Spall dreams about her laundry room. In the new home she and her husband are building in Pittsford, N.Y., no space commands her imagination more than the 8-ft. by 12-ft. room in which she will do their washing, drying, folding and ironing. It will also serve as her home office, a workshop for crafts projects and sleeping quarters for the dog. Spall can go on in great detail about the crown molding, the picture window and her plans to liven up the cream-colored walls. The laundry room will be her haven, she says--"my own private little space."

Beyond the gourmet kitchen and the spa bathroom, luxury has found its way to the laundry room. Once relegated to gloomy basements and cramped alcoves, the appliances and accessories that wash, dry and care for clothes are now in showcase spaces. Architects and home builders across the country report a surge in demand for spacious, centrally located, multipurpose laundry rooms. The equipment in them is getting a makeover too. The latest generation of washing and drying machines boasts high-tech innovations--with high price tags to match. Home stores and catalogs brim with $120 hampers and $20-a-bottle cleaning products that have scents like pink grapefruit and lavender.

The movement is the latest advance in the well-known trend of nesting. Spooked by the scary world they see on the evening news, more American homeowners are burrowing in the house and finding pleasure in bringing order and perfection to even the most boring and neglected nooks--like the laundry room. And why not? After all, Americans produce a quarter ton of dirty laundry per person every year and collectively do 35 billion loads of laundry, according to Procter & Gamble, the leading purveyor of detergents. Every second 1,100 loads are started in households across the country, with U.S. women--yes, still mostly women--devoting seven to nine hours each week to keeping the family clothes clean. Now many are finding a way to make the time enjoyable and more useful.

"Just like cooking, laundry is becoming an art form," says Mike Marsden, professor of cultural studies at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond. These "gourmet laundry rooms," as Marsden calls them, began sprouting up in earnest over the past year, and many have media centers with TVs and sound systems, play areas, doghouses and refreshment stations. "No one wants to do the laundry, but you might as well be comfortable while you're doing it," says homeowner Carolyn Hudson of South Shreveport, La. The laundry room in her antiques-filled ranch incorporates a cozy home office where she checks e-mail and shops online as she waits for the tumble dry.

Multipurpose is the key word for the new laundry room. Mariana Fischer of Key Biscayne, Fla., added a bed and bath to hers, so it doubles as an extra guest room. Chris Schwartz's laundry room on Chicago's North Shore is "basically the think tank of the house," she says. It has areas for dog grooming, food preparation, flower arranging, gift wrapping and computing. The family's three bichons frises live in gated homes beneath the soapstone counters.

The laundry room is ideal, homeowners are finding, for consolidating activities previously scattered throughout the house. In the Vero Beach, Fla., house that Barbara and Chester Irons are building, the laundry room will feature professional-grade fixtures, including two sinks, a drip-dry area, a rotary pressing machine, a pressure ironing board and a sewing table--not to mention stations for crafts, gift wrapping and potting plants. "I'm not trying to create a huge, superfluous room," says Barbara Irons. "When you look at historic houses, they had all sorts of rooms for maintaining the house--the mudroom, the butler's pantry. I'm trying to create one room to provide those functions and get them out of the kitchen."

Of course, the Ironses have the space. (Their laundry room will measure 12 ft. by 14 ft.) But homeowners with less room are finding inventive ways to make the most of it. Scott Cuming converted an oversize closet in his San Antonio, Texas, home into a laundry room--miniature kitchen--wine cellar. "Our kitchen's incredible, but people migrate into the laundry room," says Cuming. "You can go in there and make your own coffee with the push of a button. It's inviting."

Hanging out in the laundry room would sound about as pleasant as doing yoga in Times Square were it not for the dramatic upgrade in laundry machines, which operate not only more quietly but also more efficiently. Roused by the demand for German company Miele's $1,500-plus front-loading machines, American manufacturers like Maytag, Sears and Whirlpool are rushing to offer better-priced front loaders, which save space, conserve water and energy and hum instead of roar. Sales of front-loading machines have nearly doubled, from 6% of the U.S. market in 2000 to 11% in 2002, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.

Some merchants take it still further. Whirlpool is so enthusiastic about the market that it unveiled a high-concept model laundry room in January called the Family Studio, packed with a whole line of fancy accessories like the Personal Valet, an appliance that simulates dry cleaning by misting a water-based solution on clothes to remove odors and wrinkles; a cabinet that circulates warm air to dry delicates; and a sink with three microjets that mimic a hand-washing motion. The Family Studio can cost $5,000, or more than five times as much as a plain-vanilla washer-dryer set. "The bottom line is that the average person spends 400 hours a year doing laundry, and we can offer some tools to make it easier," says brand manager Mara Villanueva. "We don't truly believe we're going to get people to love laundry."

Some can't help falling in love. In the Las Vegas home of Jack and Elizabeth Carter, Michael Payne, the L.A.-based designer and host of Home & Garden TV's Designing for the Sexes, was inspired by a single picture of Elvis--a distant relative of Jack's--tacked to the wall of the laundry room. In a departure from the couple's usual staid taste, Payne painted the room purple and crammed it with memorabilia like a guitar-shaped clock and Elvis magnets on the appliances. "It is, if I may say, really quite fabulous," says Payne. A chime playing Love Me Tender on the door to the room was the Carters' own touch. "It makes me happy every time I go in there," sighs Elizabeth. A laundry room that makes you happy? Now that's a fresh wrinkle. --With reporting by Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Elizabeth Coady and Noah Isackson/Chicago, Kathie Klarreich/Miami, Adam Pitluk/Shreveport and Sean Scully/Los Angeles

With reporting by Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Elizabeth Coady and Noah Isackson/Chicago, Kathie Klarreich/Miami, Adam Pitluk/Shreveport and Sean Scully/Los Angeles