We poured so much time, effort and love into building our home over the past few years and even though I’m not even close to an interior designer or an expert in the “home” space, it’s something that brought me a lot of joy. While it feels out of my wheelhouse and comfort zone to share this kind of content on my blog, since quite a few of you seem interested in a non-interior designer’s home tour, I figured why not!? And if it doesn’t interest you, please skip over this post!
We still don’t have every room in our home complete and I think we’ve hung all of three pictures on our walls so this may be the slowest home tour in all the land. But since I’m not exactly a “Type A” person or a perfectionist in my real life, “good enough” is good enough for me for this home tour. We’ll still be changing some things, hanging some things, adding some things and swapping out some things but isn’t every home a never-ending work in progress anyway?
With all of that being said, it’s time to dive into the first room of our home tour: Our laundry room!
Our Laundry Room
This may seem like an odd place to begin but it’s one of my absolute favorite rooms in our house and it’s also the room that was pretty much done once the wallpaper went up after we moved in.
Our laundry room in our old home was more or less a laundry closet so Ryan and I were especially grateful to be able to put more thought into “secondary spaces” in our new home. We put a lot of time into designing our pantry, mudroom and laundry room because they were three things we didn’t have before that we thought would help our overall home organization with three boys in the mix.
Overall, I wanted our laundry room to feel like an escape. As a mom of three boys, I was also a little over designing neutral or semi-masculine spaces so I made the laundry room one of the more feminine spaces in our home. My hope was for our laundry room to have lots of natural light and floral elements and also be functional for our family. Three of our family members loving nothing more than playing outside in the dirt and mud which means we do a lot of laundry in our house. Having a place where we can sort and fold our laundry that wasn’t our kitchen table was also high on my wish list.
Our countertops are a simple white quartz which is durable, bright and easily wipes clean.
One of the more “extra” things we did in our laundry room was add in a dog bath.
Pinterest inspired this idea because we are a dog-loving family and knew we’d not only use a dog bath to wash our dog but also would use the space for soaking, cleaning and stain-treating larger laundry items like comforters, couch slipcovers, sneakers, blankets and more.
And while we’re on the topic of dog-friendly laundry room spaces, another thing we added into our laundry room cabinetry was a pull-out dog food bin. I majorly geek out over stuff like this so I had to highlight this, too!
Our cabinets are painted Benjamin Moore Revere Pewter, a color I loved even more in person than when I saw the paint samples. It’s honestly a color I wish I would’ve used in more places because it’s so gorgeous and neutral without being too white, too gray, too green or too beige.
I also opted to mix and match hardware colors and paired a brushed nickel faucet and dog wash shower with polished brass cabinet pulls and latches and for a little variety.
(Our exact faucet is discontinued but this one is nearly identical.)
One thing I didn’t anticipate through the homebuilding process was how many decisions go into selecting tile. Phew! Tile is one area that stressed me out a lot because I have zero experience in this area and didn’t realize you aren’t just picking out a single tile when you design a laundry room or bathroom but you’re also choosing grout color, caulk color, trim tile color, floor tile, bath/shower floor tile, wall tile, etc. There was a definitely learning curve for me in this area!
(That wooden step stool was my grandma Mimi’s and I love it so much.)
For our laundry room, I loved the look of checkerboard tile on the floor or terrazzo floor tile but those were two design decisions Ryan couldn’t get behind. He never flat out said no and trusted me to make 99 percent of our interior home decisions which was wonderful but I could also tell he wasn’t feeling those tile ideas for the laundry room. Since he rarely had a negative opinion about the selections I was considering, I figured I should pivot on this one a bit and ended up going with a slate gray hexagon tile that had a little veining in it for some interest.
I ended up loving the contrast of a deeper color floor tile with the lighter cabinets and wallpaper and our laundry room flooring is one of my favorites in our home!
Another thing I love in our laundry room that’s rather random is this wall-mounted hanging garment rack I found through Anthropologie.
I looked for something like this online for waaay too long (and even ordered one I returned because the finish looked awful in person) but this hanging bar is both beautiful and functional. We use it all the time!
As for our laundry room backsplash, I told our builder I wasn’t feeling a traditional tile backsplash. Truthfully, I cannot stand a lot of grout in a backsplash because, while I loved the update we did to the backsplash in our former kitchen, I could not stand cleaning a lot of grout in a backsplash. We went with a slab backsplash in our new kitchen for this very reason but in our laundry room, we opted for a plaster-inspired backsplash.
I wanted something that would add an earthier, slightly more rustic element to this space and love the way it turned out. Plus, it tones down the walls opposite the busy, floral wallpaper we selected for all of the other walls in this space.
The wallpaper in our laundry room tugged on my heartstrings because it so closely mirrors the wallpaper my grandma Mimi had in her guest room in her home in Gettysburg. I remember thinking this room was so beautifully playful and could not wait to use something similar in our home. I figured if it was a wallpaper I loved when I was 12 years old that I still love now that I’m 38 years old, the chances are high I will not get sick of it anytime soon!
When I saw this wallpaper on Anthrpologie’s website, I was instantly sold and built the colors in our laundry room tile and cabinet selections around it.
Aaand I think that wraps up the first room in our home tour! It may be another six months until I get around sharing another one of these but hopefully this was at least semi-interesting for those of you who requested a more detailed glimpse into our home.
Thank you for coming along for the ride!
Laundry Room Selections
Below you will find a quick a summary of our laundry room selections! If I missed anything you’d like me to share more information about related to our laundry room, please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer any questions in the comments section of this post.
