The laundry is the room most often left until last and most often regretted. It is small, which means every decision counts: where the trough sits, how much bench you get, whether the machines fit properly with their doors open, and where things actually dry on a wet Melbourne week in July.
We handle laundry renovations across South East Melbourne, standalone or as part of a larger renovation. Bundling it in is usually the more economical route, since the plumber, electrician, waterproofer and tiler are already on site.
What a laundry renovation involves
- Layout planning around your specific machines, their door swing and traffic flow
- Custom joinery, benchtops, overhead storage and integrated hampers
- Plumbing relocation where the current layout does not work
- Waterproofing and tiling to the same standard as our bathrooms
- Ventilation and drying solutions designed in properly rather than added later
- Lighting, power points positioned for how the room is used, and dedicated circuits where needed
- Trough, tapware, and machine connections with accessible isolation valves
Getting a small room right
Laundries fail on function, not on finish. Four decisions carry most of the outcome.
Bench over the machines. Front loaders allow a continuous benchtop above them, which is the single biggest usable-space gain available in a small laundry. Top loaders do not, and that constraint has to be settled before joinery is drawn.
Where wet things go. Every laundry needs somewhere to hang items that cannot go in the dryer. A pull-out rail, a drop-down rack or a dedicated section of hanging space stops that job migrating to the shower rail and the backs of dining chairs.
Trough size and position. A deep trough is far more useful than a wide shallow one, and putting it at the end of a run rather than the middle preserves continuous bench.
Storage for what actually lives there. Detergent, cleaning products, the vacuum, the ironing board, the mop. These have real dimensions, and joinery designed without measuring them produces cupboards that do not close.
Ventilation and moisture
A laundry generates more moisture than any room except the bathroom, and it usually has less ventilation. A condenser or heat pump dryer keeps that moisture contained, whereas a vented dryer must be ducted to the outside; venting into the room or the roof cavity puts the moisture into your building fabric.
Where the laundry is internal with no window, an exhaust fan ducted externally is not optional. We size it to the room and run the duct properly, because retrofitting it after the ceiling is closed is expensive.
Waterproofing a laundry
Laundries are wet areas, and the requirements are real even though the room looks dry most of the time. Waterproofing is required behind the trough, around floor wastes and at wall and floor junctions, and a laundry with a floor waste has different requirements from one without. The failure mode people meet is a burst washing machine hose, which will dump a large volume of water very quickly. A properly waterproofed floor turns that into a mopping job instead of a subfloor replacement.
European and cupboard laundries
In smaller homes and newer estate builds, the laundry is often a cupboard off a hallway or bathroom. These can work well, but they need specific treatment: adequate ventilation inside a closed cabinet, a stacked or side-by-side machine configuration that leaves service access, a bifold or cavity door that does not block the corridor, and enough bench or fold-down surface to be usable. We design these regularly and will tell you honestly when the space is genuinely too tight for the machines you own.
What drives the cost of a laundry renovation
- Whether plumbing moves. Keeping the trough and machine connections in place is the largest saving available.
- Joinery extent. Full-height cabinetry with overheads costs more than a bench and a single cupboard, and buys considerably more storage.
- Benchtop material. Laundries are a good place to use a hard-wearing mid-range surface rather than premium stone.
- Tiling extent. Floor only, splashback, or full-height walls.
- Whether it is done alongside other work. Combining it with a bathroom or kitchen renovation reduces the cost meaningfully.
See our renovation price guide for indicative ranges.
Laundry renovations across South East Melbourne
We renovate laundries throughout the South East corridor, including Berwick, Narre Warren, Cranbourne, Pakenham, Officer, Clyde, Dandenong, Endeavour Hills, Hallam and Beaconsfield, and the surrounding suburbs.
Older homes in Dandenong, Endeavour Hills and Hallam typically have separate laundries with generous floor area but original fittings, minimal storage and often an external door that eats wall space, so the work is about reclaiming that area with proper joinery. Newer estate homes in Clyde, Officer, Cranbourne and Pakenham tend to have compact laundries or cupboard configurations where the challenge is fitting genuine function into a very small footprint.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a laundry renovation take?
One to two weeks on site for a standalone laundry, with the waterproofing cure time being the main fixed constraint. Less if it runs alongside other work already underway.
Do I need a permit?
A like-for-like laundry renovation generally does not require a building permit, but the plumbing must be done by a licensed plumber who issues a compliance certificate.
Can you convert a cupboard into a laundry, or a laundry into something else?
Both are common. Converting a laundry into a bathroom or extra storage, or relocating it into a cupboard to free up a room, are jobs we do regularly. Feasibility depends on where the drainage runs.
Should I do the laundry at the same time as the bathroom?
If both need doing, yes. They frequently share a wall and the same trades, and doing them together is meaningfully cheaper than two separate jobs.
Will my existing machines fit the new design?
We measure your actual machines, including door swing and the clearance behind for hoses, rather than designing to generic dimensions. If you plan to replace them, tell us at design stage.
Book a free laundry consult
Tell us the size of the room and what is not working. We will come out, measure up and give you a free ballpark figure. Your layout and firm fixed price come from our design and documentation stage — one set fee, quoted and agreed first.
Book your free laundry consult, or see our bathroom work for the joinery, tiling and waterproofing standard you can expect.