Meaning & use
laundry room
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A room in a house or building where clothes are washed and dried.
Grammar: Countable: say a laundry room, the laundry room, two laundry rooms.
Patterns
- in the laundry room
- a laundry room with something
- the laundry room downstairs
Our laundry room is next to the kitchen, so I can hear the machine from the table.
She hung the wet sheets in the laundry room to dry overnight.
The apartment has a shared laundry room in the basement.
nouncountable
A place in a hotel, hospital, or other large building where staff wash the institution's linen and uniforms.
Grammar: Usually with the definite article when both speakers know which room is meant: the laundry room.
Patterns
- the hotel's laundry room
- work in the laundry room
He started as a porter and later worked in the hotel's laundry room.
Clean uniforms are collected from the laundry room every Monday morning.
Word forms
| plural | laundry rooms |
|---|
Common combinations
- in the laundry room
- The detergent is in the laundry room, on the top shelf.
- a laundry room downstairs
- It's handy having a laundry room downstairs when you have small children.
- a shared laundry room
- Students in the block share a laundry room on the ground floor.
- the laundry room door
- Please leave the laundry room door open so the damp air escapes.
- build a laundry room
- They built a small laundry room behind the garage.
Synonyms and how they differ
- utility room
- Common in British English for a room for washing plus other household jobs; a laundry room is used mainly for laundry.
- launderette
- A shop with machines the public pays to use, not a room inside a home.
- washhouse
- An old-fashioned word for a shared building where people once washed clothes; do not use it for a modern home.
Word family
Commonly confused: laundry room or laundromat? laundry room or laundry basket?
laundry room vs laundromat
In American English this is a shop with coin-operated machines for the public; a laundry room is normally a room in a home or building.
laundry room vs laundry basket
That is the container you carry clothes in, not the room itself.
Practice
Which sentence uses "laundry room" correctly?
Choose one answer.
"Laundry room" is a countable noun for a room, so it fits after "There is a ... on the second floor". Option 3 wrongly uses it as a verb, and option 4 treats it as a machine you can buy, which should be "washing machine".
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “laundry room”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.