Is your laundry room looking a bit sparse? Or is it hard to keep neat and tidy? Try out these five popular design trends to organize and transform your space.

When most people think about decorating their homes, the laundry room tends to come in dead last.

But if you do it right, the laundry room can be a place where you enjoy hanging out, working, and relaxing. If you’ve only got a laundry closet, you can still spruce that up, too.

Let these five popular design trends help you turn a basic utilitarian space into an organized and stylish room!

1. Boost the Mood with Color

Any room that’s spartan and drab is going to drain your energy when you open its doors. Add the fact that you’re working on what’s likely your least favorite chore, and you’re going to dread the room entirely.

Instead of leaving it bare, have fun with doing a home makeover in your laundry room.

Using accents of colors that make you feel good and energized, you can switch your mood. Go from dread to contentment or enthusiasm as soon as you walk in the doors.

The study of color psychology focuses on how certain colors affect our moods. If you’re looking for positive colors to boost your energy and productivity, try:

• Red, known for quick brain stimulation and strength
• Green, a soothing anti-stress shade
• Blue, for calmness and serenity
• Yellow or orange, the cheerful, happy colors

Avoid browns, blacks, and neutrals if you want to spark your brain’s mood when you walk into your laundry room. When used right, they do add sophistication and class to a large room. But in a small space — they can have the opposite effect.

2. Give Your Laundry Room a Dual Purpose

Whether you’ve got a laundry “closet” or a walk-in room, consider using that space for more than just your daily clothes cleaning chores.

Redesign large rooms for storage or even enhance into a reading or game nook. Some laundry rooms can double as pet washing stations, too!

Regardless of the dual purpose you choose for your room, you must sort it systematically from top to bottom.

When it comes to making these arrangements, storage baskets, bins, and dividers are a must-have. Use these little gadgets to turn your laundry room into an efficient, organized mini-attic.

• Wire baskets for visibility
• Shelf organizers to add room
• Shelf dividers for organization in tight spaces
• Clear storage totes

For that uber-level of expert organization, add erasable labels to the front of your basket so you can tell at a glance what’s where and change it as needed.

3. Make the Most of Your Wall Space

Efficiency doesn’t stop at your shelves. Designing your walls for use from top to bottom is a popular, and smart, trend.

With all the creative and innovative products available today, there’s no reason you can’t use every available inch of space in your laundry room — including the air!

Standalone shelves add usable storage to rooms that can’t have shelves hung or holes put in the walls. You can use them in place of, or addition to, hanging shelves just because they add style to the room.

These types of shelves are the perfect way to keep your shoe collection under control. Or to house your linens, no matter whether you are looking for something vintage and traditional or modern and contemporary.

Shower curtain rods have been trending recently, too. They are useful beyond their essential bathroom functions. Creative designers grab these cheap, easy-to-use tools to do everything from hang baby’s bath toys to organize the kitchen cupboards!

In your laundry room, you can use the versatile shower curtain rod to stretch across your overhead area as a drying rack. Or use it to hang lightweight storage shelving units.

4. Get Some Texture Involved

Texture is a frequently overlooked element of design. Layering your laundry room with items that add texture improves the appearance and can be functional, too.

Examples of texture in your laundry room include:

• Area rugs
• Countertop finishes (laminate or other nonporous surfaces)
• Window treatments

Like our favorite shower rod, curtains themselves can do more than their typical function of covering up windows.

Add texture to your room by putting up stylish curtains to hide ugly or messy shelves that you haven’t changed yet. They’re also great for covering up your laundry supplies if you don’t have cupboards to store them in.

5. Don’t Forget to Bring in the Plants

Doing your laundry adds a large number of pollutants into your air and increases your room’s humidity. Plants can help combat the adverse effects, especially in small areas.

Science has shown that interior plants have a multitude of benefits on their environment, such as:

• Decreasing the carbon dioxide levels in a room
• Increasing humidity and eliminating excess moisture
• Helping stabilize the room’s temperature
• Reducing pollutants and dust in the air
• Boosting the overall mood of people in a small environment

A common misconception is that plants must have sunlight and open rooms to thrive. This isn’t always true, though.

You don’t have to have wide-open spaces for all plants to grow. Some plants prefer to live in small, dark areas. And, even better, you don’t have to have the proverbial green thumb to keep them alive.

Used around the world, popular plants in laundry rooms include the Chinese Evergreen, the Peace Lily, and Begonias.

None of these plants need daily watering and upkeep, so don’t let that stop you from using them in your laundry room design.

Instead, let your tastes (not tastebuds, though, some plants are poisonous) help you decide. Each plant has its own unique flowers, leaves, and color for you to choose from.

Conclusion

Styling the laundry room has become a popular trend. There are so many ways to turn your sparse, bare utility room into an on-point, stylish place to show off.

Who knows? These five expert design tips could change your whole life.

Maybe you’ll love your new room so much that laundry will soon become your favorite chore.

Author Bio:

Ryan Sundling is a Group Marketing Manager at Cardinal Group Management. With over ten years of experience in the conventional housing industry, he works with The Ruckus to help them with their marketing efforts.