Laundry Room Before & Afters

Renovation by: Laura Location: Oak Park, Illinois My husband Michael and I just purchased this 1892 gothic Victorian home in outlying Chicago’s historic Oak Park. (land of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace.) I own a jewelry boutique called Gem Jewelry Boutique and Michael is a general contractor. The home is perfect with its nearly 10 foot high ceilings and elegant moulding, original marble fireplace and gothic windows.

Renovation by: Katie Location: Canada For Christmas this year, I decided to update my grandfather’s living room as my present to him. My grandmother passed away last February, and he needed a change – something that he could see everyday that would make him happy to remember his life with her. They had kept their 1960s furniture in near perfect condition, so I knew I would just need to update the styling of the room with fabrics and some interesting wall art.

Feast your eyes upon our dozen favorite cozy living spaces of the year, from light and bright to bold and colorful.

You'll want to rainbow everything once you see this transformation.

So bright! So open! So ORGANIZED.

Looking at this living room just makes us want to curl up with a good book.

Ok, yes, strong claim—but wait until you see it.

Bye, dirty carpet and crumbly ceiling tiles. Hi, dream destination.

You can barely tell it's the same space!

A wall full of built-in bookshelves is a bookworm's dream! Bit Karie Frost didn't love about it: the white paint job, which—while nice enough—made the wear-and-tear of the decades-old wood more obvious.

This rental-friendly living room redo is peak chill spot.

After a year of living with their new build's plain white living room, Olivia and her boyfriend Tom were ready to fill their space with color and personality.

This three-bedroom apartment in Tel Aviv used to be a neglected and gray apartment. You have to see it now!

Not to mention balanced.

Emily Henderson’s editorial director, Arlyn Hernandez, just revealed her “Bright and Happy” (rental) living room Makeover Takeover over on the site, and it’s packed with design inspiration and great advice for renters and homeowners alike. The living room “before” was so relatable: quality pieces that didn’t fit the new living space.

The enclosed porch on Ashley‘s 1905 home did not live up to expectations: a low ceiling and burgundy walls and floors turned the space into a “sad little box,” she says. “It felt disconnected from the rest of the house,” especially after doing extensive renovations. “I know how much some updates would transform this room,” she says. So over the course of six weeks, she transformed this dark and dreary porch into a pastel, botanical laundry room.

Timothy and Laura are busy folks – they have a blog (make that two) to run and a new baby. A secret to their “do it all” success? They know that one key to handling new challenges is to plan ahead and do what you can when you have the time to make life easier when you no longer have the luxury of that time.

In late 2011, I looked at my living room wall and decided I need to refresh it. So I decided to do a small project by taking photos of the flora that surrounds my home since I am living near one of Singapore’s best Nature Reserves, The Bukit Timah Hill. I have been running on the forest trail for quite a while, enjoying the peace in contrast to the hectic city life. With inspiration of 18th century botanical illustration, I decided to do a modern interpretation.

Scandinavian magazine Allt I Hemmet recently featured this laundry room, submitted by one of their readers. Far from exciting, Anna-Lena’s space was devoid of color and personality, not to mention cramped. With Allt I Hemmet’s help, the laundry room got a good cleaning itself, and came out on the other side with a sparkling new personality.

It took just one weekend for Tasha, a self-described “designer trapped in a lawyer’s body,” to transform her laundry room (from the room in her home “where fun went to die” ) to a room that now makes her and her husband smile! Using leftover paint from previous DIY projects, Tasha painted the cabinets and walls.

Have you ever seen those glass and brass, ’80s style light fixtures that often hang in foyers and dining rooms? Not terrible, but slightly outdated. The good news is that you might already have one or you could find a used one for cheap. The even better news is you could turn it into a stylish, geometric lamp that matches pricier contemporary lamps.

I’m super excited to share my very own living room Before & After with you. Once I finished my kitchen makeover earlier this year, things snowballed a bit and I suddenly wanted to change everything. I’ve also lived in my loft for seven years, and the itch is for real—the redecorating itch, that is. That’s a thing, right?

The laundry room is a humble space, but it’s also a hardworking one. And if you’re going to spend time in there washing your clothes, shouldn’t it be a place you enjoy? Mandi from Vintage Revivals recently shared the transformation of her laundry room, which went from a boring, standard-issue builder grade space with not much going for it to a very lovely (and very efficient) space where anyone would love to wash clothes.

Sometimes the “before” photo is more jaw-dropping than the finished project, and this is one of those times. Round of applause for Lotta, who was able to see the clean, modern potential in this living room —especially given what she had to work with. From Lotta: This beautiful modern home, designed and built in 1987 by architect Jon Condoret, needed to be brought back to modern again.

Your laundry room is a very functional space, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a boring one. These homeowners, not content with their existing builder-grade laundry rooms, set out to transform these humble spaces into something a little more useful, and much more beautiful. If you’re lucky enough to have a laundry room all your own, you’ll find plenty to inspire you in these four transformations.

Spoilers for “Best Room Wins.”While we’ve been in a golden age of TV for awhile now, but only in the past few seasons have we seen more variety in new home and design programming. If you want something besides another flipper taking over their hometown or another pair of questionably employed folks complaining about paint colors, there are actually other options out there.

Here’s a room with beautiful bones—stunning wood floors, classic fireplace, tasteful paint colors, interesting accent wall, high ceilings—but can it be even better? Here’s how the homeowner kept everything that’s good about this room, while remedying the “big empty space!” next to the fireplace. First, here’s how Lindsay of Indigo & Gray described the situation before the change: We had just moved into our brand new house.

Here’s a lovely dining room that boasts ample natural light, beautiful wood floors, covetable furnishings, a graceful light fixture, and happy plants. It’s nearly perfect! There is, however, the matter of that huge blank wall that somewhat sucks the life out of the room… This is so fun!

This is a very nice living room! If it has a flaw, it’s that it is all a bit…beige, with endless shades of taupe and brown. Check out the renovation that makes the room’s many assets pop — and makes you forget there was ever any beige involved. It’s now so fantastic!

When I saw this living room, I crossed my fingers that the ceiling beams and wood-burning stove survived the renovation. Spoiler alert: they did! Just don’t get too attached to that amazing, but undeniably eccentric, hutch. Beams and stove are intact, but the problem now is that they’re utterly upstaged by that astounding floor by Fairwood.

The “Paint It White” philosophy gets a bad rap sometimes, but it can be a great method for unifying disparate elements while emphasizing texture and form. In this home, white paint was used judiciously to update a living room fireplace, with wonderful results. This fireplace surround involves quite a few textures, including the red brick, and the white paint unites them all.

Like most laundry/mudrooms in existence, this one was overwhelmed. Serving as a catchall space, it held “swim gear, laundry, and other junk… tons of shoes, the vacuum cleaner, and extra pantry items (since we don’t have a pantry).” That’s enough to overwhelm any space, but one intrepid DIYer spent six weeks turning this one into a lovely, multi-purpose room. While a cheerful pup improves any room by 1200 percent, some other major upgrades are at play as well.

This laundry room was pretty nice—lovely daylight, pleasant neutrals, plenty of storage, and a few beautiful accessories. But after a dozen years of basically ignoring it, the room’s owners were more than ready for a makeover. Here’s the scoop on the issues with the laundry room: Our laundry room is central to our house, situated off of our living room and right next to our bedroom.

Vancouver-based Kristina Steinmetz knows her way around a good DIY. Her site, Ich Designer, is filled with clever and sophisticated home projects and IKEA hacks that have surprisingly humble origins and price tags. We recently featured her re-done mudroom, and her latest living room makeover might be even better. Here’s a wider shot, so you can get more of a sense of the whole room. It was in good shape but definitely needed an update.

The holidays are a season of giving, and since today is Christmas, we wanted to highlight a Before & After that perfectly captures the spirit of the season. In just a few hours, Emily Henderson and her team transformed the living and dining room of a deserving family, treating them to a brand-new space as a holiday surprise. Last month, Emily put out a call on her website for readers to nominate someone they felt really deserved a free makeover.

This living room had a fabulous picture window, but that was about all its new owners loved. After refinishing the floors, replacing the fireplace, and majorly expanding the built-in storage, they now have a living room they totally love. Sarah of Room for Tuesday has created a combination fireplace/statement wall, and it was a fantastic way to go. The green paint really centers the room and adds a major punch of color, while allowing the rest of the walls to be light-reflecting white.

When reader Erika moved into this house, the living room was musty and dusty. But after four months and a ton of work (and a fair amount of money), this space is transformed and totally fresh. It’s easy to look at that room before and assume the only issue with it is that it might not be someone’s taste. But here’s the truth, from reader Erika Thompson: These are the pictures that were on the listing when we bought the house.

After 20 years, this living room was ready for an update. It didn’t need a gut job, just a refresh, a lightening, and perhaps even a brightening. Now the room still has all of its best elements, plus a few new ones that suit the space—and the times—perfectly. This is so streamlined and sophisticated now. It’s a clear evolution of the aesthetic seen in the image before, which is fascinating to see.

Morgan and her husband recently bought a home and, little by little, are updating each room. First up, the laundry room. One of the things that sold them on the house was having a mud room off the garage, complete with a washer and dryer. As handy as that is, the room was very dark with brown walls, brown cabinets and was desperately in need of an update. More than anything Morgan wanted a light, bright and fun space to work in.

It’s not a problem that many people have in New York, but this Tribeca apartment was almost too big. Sans furniture, the side-by-side living rooms seemed intimidating and cavernous. Plus, the unusual proportions of the space, with windows sitting almost on the floor, made furnishing it tricky. So the homeowners called in Homepolish designer Alec Holland, who transformed the space into a cozy family home, using tricks that anybody can utilitze in a room that feels just a little too large.

See? Wow! Some of the changes in Ashley Rose of Sugar & Cloth’s living room are ambitious and intimidating—the wainscoting, the (SPOILER ALERT) fireplace—but others are more doable while still having a major effect. Swapping out the art, throw pillows, and accessories made such a difference, and the new sofa and rug turned a cozy living room into a dreamy, airy space.

Despite the fact that every room in this house was dark and the living room was a deep, almost-brown maroon color, Andrea (a fashion blogger over at Blonde Bedhead) could see this home’s potential. A bold move, considering this is her first house! “I was your typical millennial, avoiding home ownership for years, choosing the mobile life of apartment rentals.

Lauren’s living room was dark and dated, and distinctly not her style. She gave renovating the space the old college try when she first moved in, but with other spaces in the home needing her energy and attention she wasn’t able to fully finish it. Enter one of the most valuable tools available to DIYers everywhere — a good friend. From Lauren: When we bought the house, the living room was dark and, to put it frankly, “depressing.

Like death and taxes, laundry is one of the near inescapable drudgeries of modern life. Kate figured if she has to spend time on it, she should do it in a space that doesn’t totally bum her out. With a few trips to Target, some leftover paint and oh-so-limited free time, she created a laundry room that injects a little cheer into a chore. From Kate: I think “boring and builder basic” sums up our old laundry room up nicely! Oh, and cluttered. SO. MUCH. CLUTTER.

The before: bland, typical and boring. The after? A creative, bright and bold living room with #desertvibes.

Until we received this submission, we just kind of assumed that a dark and bland laundry room is sort of par for the course when you’re renting. If you’re on the lucky side it’s clean and not spooky and those of us on the other end of the spectrum truck it to the laundromat. Well throw out what you thought you knew about laundry rooms and deep dive into this laundry room makeover! From Cat: Laundry. It’s loads of fun, right?

Brady was blessed with a beauty of a blank canvas, and he did not fail to make it special. By mixing a variety of styles, from Boho to classic Hollywood glam, he was able to create a space unique to his personal style and needs. From Brady: I spent months and months looking for the “perfect place” and saw over 20 apartments before I finally landed on this one.

It can be hard to feel inspired when you walk into your newly purchased home’s living room and the windows (and fireplace mantel and furniture) are dripping in drapery reminiscent of a doily. But Lauren of Circle G Designs managed to design her Pittsburgh home with class and style, blending modern sensibilities while respecting the home’s 1964-era architecture.

Andrew Deming and Rachel Gant of YIELD Design Co. transform a drab 1950s living room into a bright and fresh sanctuary, incorporating their mix of modern and vintage design. The difference is astounding, and truly brings this midcentury home to its fullest potential. “When we bought our house last year, the living room was one of the worst spaces.

At Apartment Therapy, we talk a lot about dealing with small spaces, but larger spaces can also present their own unique design challenge. When one Brooklyn family moved into their dream home, the oversized living room proved to be a bit of a conundrum — so they turned to a designer for guidance. Before, the family’s furniture — a single sofa and a small dining table — was a bit lost in the expansive space.

Yasmin hit all of the magic words with this project: DIY, IKEA, Storage. And while it may seem counterintuitive to open up your laundry room to the world, it works wonders for Yasmin’s space. From Yasmin: The laundry situation was not very glamorous before. A stacked Washer and Dryer in a tiny dark closet, with no built in storage space. The potential was great. We ripped out those ugly brown doors that were keeping the space so closed.

When it comes to Laundry Rooms, they tend to occupy the “out of sight, out of mind” spots in our homes. But after upgrading to a front loading Washer and Dryer that led to the removal of her closet doors, Sarah suddenly found herself airing her dirty laundry (sorry) at the top of her stairs. From Sara: When I bought my house I initially had the old school top load Washer and Dryers in a closet upstairs by all the bedrooms.

This little corner recess in my rental apartment living room had gone through many changes over the years. That is until I found this gel fuel fireplace that was within my budget. Once it was delivered and put in its place, I realized it looked very small and toy like. My dad built a small hearth for it to sit on and the bookcases to fill in the empty space on either side. I was quite happy with the outcome, at the time.

We spend a lot of time in the living room as a family, reading after dinner, celebrating birthdays, entertaining, playing board games on New Years, and it’s a space that needed a little editing to gracefully reflect transitions in our family life. As I simplified the room, my family instantly felt at home in the new space, and our new teal velvet sofa became a popular (and comfortable) destination.

We love when people add some style to utilitarian spaces. Alisha’s laundry room was making the chore even more of a drag, so with a weekend and $100, she gave the space a refresh. From Alisha: With 2 kids under 2 we do a lot of laundry – and our drab, impractical laundry room was making laundry a chore. By removing/painting the dated wood cabinets and adding a simple pattern this room brightened right up!

Minneapolis designer Jay Nuhring has another no-shopping makeover for us. This time, his client has a huge living room, three of the same sofa, and a wall of books that looks a bit bland. Jay applied the use-what-you-have motto and created a whole new space within a space! From Jay: This project was really easy and really affordable. Nothing new was purchased for this living room makeover. Everything was shopped and sourced from what the homeowner already had in the house.

While she was overseas with their daughter, Jeffery decided to surprise his wife with a total living room transformation. See the new room—and read about her reaction—after the jump! From Jeffery: My wife and daughter went to the Philippines for 3 months. I wanted to surprise my wife with a living room makeover, which I tackled in the two weeks before their arrival home. Our living room was boring. The last owners had a thing for wood grain and dull colors.

When Cassie from Hi Sugarplum! moved into her home, the basic features were solid: a wall of windows, a brick fireplace, and plenty of space. But the room seemed too dark for her taste, and the furnishings didn’t feel quite right. Fast forward a few years, and it feels like a completely different room. The white walls instantly brightened the room, while all the accents and accessories keep the room colorful and happy.

With the laundry room in her new home visible from the front door, Tania made fixing it up her first priority. Adding functionality and style, plus a way to close off the space when it was less than company ready, were top of the list: From Tania: In the fall of 2014 I bought a 1960s ranch fixer upper house.

This summer, my husband and I bought our first home. Having been living in a big flat with high ceilings and sprawling open plan living for the past five years, the reality of what we could afford as our first step on the property ladder hit us like a DIY toolkit in the face.

Melissa’s living room wasn’t bad looking — it had perfectly functional, traditional-styled furniture and a lot of natural light. But it didn’t fit her or her husband’s style. So they worked together to come up with a look that would! From Melissa: My husband (lover of mid-century modern) and myself (a lover of modern, chic style) met in the middle and co-designed our space together.

Anna and her fiancé were like many couples who are just starting out: their first home was full of mismatched hand-me-downs. Even though there’s a big front window, the room never felt like it got a lot of natural light. And it was just small and cramped. Their goal: Make their living room lighter, brighter and look bigger! Here’s how they did it.

Not everyone is brave enough to show off their laundry room like Anna. Hers was the room that accumulated all of the extra “I-don’t-quite-know-what-to-do-with-this-right-now-so-I’m-going-to-leave-it-here-and-forget-all-about-it.” Finally enough was enough and Anna decided her laundry room should be functional for, you know, actual laundry. These were Anna’s goals: •A surface to sort and fold laundry comfortably. •A place to hang ironing.

From Jamie: In truth there are still a few small things we want to change or tweak (one major project being the demolition of the drywall around the stairs to allow the installation of a modern, open handrail) but we are satisfied with how far it has come. We feel it is bright, cheerful, and modern while still meshing with the overall transitional style of the house.

You know how earlier today we shared real advice about how to be patient and take your time when decorating a home? This Before & After perfectly highlights that idea. See this living room go from full of uninspiring hand-me-down furniture to a living room that, after taking the time to discover their tastes, is now a sophisticated, lovely space that matches their personality!

Nicole Lanteri worked with this family of five to transform this long, narrow space into a beautiful room that is inviting and much more functional. Nicole says the key was to rethink the layout and size of the furniture to create a cohesive feel in this multi-purpose family room.

Design Love FestEmily Henderson Color and light were important elements of this makeover, and it couldn’t be cheerier. Bri and Emily went with a mix of vintage, eclectic, mid-century and new pieces to create this lively and delicious space. The turquoise, fuchsia, gold and natural palette melds beautifully. The ample foliage brings the room together, softens the palette and creates such a calm and peaceful environment.To see more of the makeover, check out Design Love Fest.

Jenna’s living room was filled with furniture that she loved, but that wasn’t working in her new home. Here’s how she transformed the space by letting go and bringing in some new color and pieces: From Jenna: Over the past 3 years since moving into my home, this space has been forever in transition. Much of the room was filled with furniture that was meaningful to us, but just didn’t fit.

Joy and Corey loved their downtown Los Angeles loft, but its small footprint made finding storage space pretty challenging. So they figured out a way to take advantage of their 13′ ceilings by going vertical.From Joy: The whole project was inspired by the need to get stuff up and off the floor; with limited square footage, every inch counts. Also, I really wanted a way to consolidate all our media elements.

A couple of years ago, a friend and I decided to invest in a home that we could fix up, and flip in a year or two. I also needed a place to live. I took on the role of general contractor, landlord and designer. I also took over one of the units on the second floor of this 4-plex. We found the perfect house in Roncesvalles, near shops, waterfront, highway and crown jewel, High Park. My unit was in a pretty rough state but I could see the potential.

This earthy room was in need of a bit of energy. Interior designer Kirsten Krason came in and saved the space. Follow me after the jump to what she stirred up…Kirsten had a little pattern party with primary colors and brightened up this room in a big way. She kept a good amount of the furniture and added some new pieces along the journey. She splurged on a few big items like the rug, coffee table and window treatments, but then bargain hunted for other great but inexpensive finds.

Sheila was never a fan of the console that held her TV and other media equipment, especially given its size in relation to the awkward corner that housed the installation. Months ago she found the ideal solution to her dilemma and ordered an artist’s easel to convert into a TV/media stand. With just a little modification, she was able to transform the easel and therefore her living room.