I've had them a few ways. One was in a detached garage, and you had to go outside in the rain to do the laundry and you could never hear the buzz when it was finished. The current one is upstairs between the bedrooms. I hate that I have to go up there all day to do it. Not a fan of upstairs, PLUS I fear leaks on our beautiful ceiling. My absolute favorite was a laundry chute under the master sink cupboard that would drop the clothes right into the laundry room downstairs. I LOVED that! What would drive me nuts was when I would tell the boys to clean their rooms and I would find perfectly folded clothes in with the dirty stuff...........

I've had laundry upstairs near bedrooms, off the kitchen, and on the main floor in a mud room.

I greatly prefer my laundry room to be on the main floor. Even better with the master on the main.

My votes are..

1) Main floor mudroom or kitchen

2) Near master bedroom

3) upstairs

I'm lucky to be getting 1&2 in my build.

I *hated* closet laundry with bi-fold doors because I do a lot of laundry (boy kids and sports). It was an eye sore and the doors were always left open.

Do you have anything else in the basement? Is there a rec room or other living areas?

I would vote for main floor/mudroom first. Basement, only if you can make it a larger utility/craft area. It's nice to have laundry close to the bedrooms, but you have to go upstairs to do the laundry.

Ideally, if you have upstairs laundry, the kids do their own! Then you have a stackable unit in your closet and don't have to go anywhere to do laundry. LOL

We're doing what Lavender_lass said - upstairs laundry room (but my kids are only 7, 5, & 3 so it will be a while before they're doing their own) and stacking in an alcove off our master closet on main floor. Our last house had laundry off kitchen and garage which I hated but primarily bc you had to walk through laundry to pass bw kitchen and garage.

Right now we have a combined laundry/master closet, just next door to the kids' bathroom and bedrooms. It works so well that laundry location was a major reason we weren't happy with many homes on the market in this area.
With 3 sporting kids I do _not_ want a laundry room by the garage and kitchen. No one takes off their dirty clothes there... And the clean stuff doesn't put itself away either.
In the house we're building the master and kids bedroom are on different side of the house. The laundry room will be located close to the biggest dirty laundry generators -> next to the kids' bathroom.

Right as you walk in from the attached garage there is a door to the right which is a laundry room. The laundry room is part of a suite of rooms ( bedroom, laundry, small bathroom) that we designed for my mother if she were to live with us in the near future.

The suite area has a seperate keyed door and opens to a gated courtyard with a pool, so the laundry room serves as a wet area as well. The babies take off their suits in there on the tile and dry off before they venture off into the rest of the house.

We've had the laundry in many configuration, but my least favorite has been in the middle of the house near the bedrooms. Second least favorite was squashed up in front of the kitchen next to a formal dining.

I like having the laundry near a secondary door, preferably near the garage. We had a lot of soccer/cross-country clothes that had to be carried through the house in the good old days, and unless you got to them right away the laundry became... rather fragrant. I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is not thinking out where they put their laundry room, and scrimping on size in there. We spend a lot of time in there; sometimes too much time methinks.

We have our laundry room on the main floor near the kitchen and have a main floor master. The kids rooms are upstairs and we put a laundry chute from their bathroom to the laundry room. It is one of my favorite things about my house. The chute dumps into an upper cabinet big enough for a tall laundry basket. A folding counter is under that and six open cubbies under that with laundry baskets for clean folded laundry. My only wish is for two more cubbies to fit vertical laundry baskets for sorting dirty laundry.

Since most of the laundry comes from the bedrooms/bathrooms and gets put away there, the ideal place for a w/d is near those rooms.

My current laundry room is off the garage, but is a passageway to the kitchen. I like how close to the kitchen it is, but hate that we have to go through it to get to the garage.

I like having it close to the kitchen, because that's where I spend a good amount of time, and multitasking is easier that way. I would not like a laundry room upstairs for fear of leaks. Plus I am too much of a control freak to not be in charge of how well the kids clothes are being laundered.

I would not like a laundry room in the master closet or in a super private part of the house either. We always have visitors staying for long periods of time, and it would be very awkward to have them in and out of my closet to do their own laundry.

Having two laundry areas in my house would mean double the chances of misplacing clothing. With my hectic life, I can see how easy it would be to forget wet clothes in upstairs washer and only remember days later...

Unfortunately we were not able to do a laundry shoot in this current build. But to me a laundry room near the kitchen, with a laundry shoot, and not a walk through to get to another room/garage, would be ideal.

Upstairs near bedrooms for us... pretty sure we'd rather haul just our body up/down the stairs to do laundry vs. body+laundry both directions.

Main floor for us, in a closet off the back hallway. I make the kids strip right there when they come home from their scout camping trips so they never walk into the house with whatever they have picked up. Love having it conveniently close to the kitchen so that I can hear the completion beep. I leave the finished laundry in the family room (shaking out all the things that need to be flat and hanging them over a chair) and the kids know to fold it when they come home. If it was upstairs they would never remember to do it. They always do it together (to share the pain) and they have some pretty funny conversations while they are folding the laundry since that is forced together time.

There is no perfect recipe for this it is all a personal preference. Everything is right according to the people living in it, age, kids, how often you do laundry, who does the laundry etc etc

I liked it near 2nd floor area near bedrooms and that is where we built it.

Upstairs near the bedrooms if you have a two story house. Second preference main floor. Last is basement. I'm actually building a ranch house where laundry will be on the main floor. Can no longer drag clothes up two flights of stairs. There are pros and cons of any of these.

Do not like laundry to be on second level and do not like laundry in a master/bath shower area. We have our by the mudroom/back door entrance. I like to be able to take my wet clothes outside to hang on a portable rack. I just have the kids bring down their laundry when full or better yet, they can do it :)

Mudroom- we are gardeners who get very dirty and I do not want that filth traipsing through the house, so we take off our clothes right when we come in. What's one near naked streak through the house between friends?

Of course if I had children or frequent guests I would perhaps prefer a different configuration. But it's just me and the hub and this works.

Our mudroom enters into a walk out basement and my family room is also down there- I joke that I live in my basement but it's really nearly true. I have everything I need including a dog kitchen for my own snacks so having the laundry there just makes sense.

Best:

Near the bedrooms, regardless of the floor on which they're located. This means that the laundry is done /put away near the place where the clothes are stored. I tend to put in a load of clothes before I head out to school each morning ... and then move it to the dryer when I return home, so I don't see the up/down stairs as an issue.

If the bedrooms are in different parts of the house, place the laundry near the master, and the kids can carry their things back and forth.

Mediocre:

Near the kitchen. This made sense back in the days when women were chained to the kitchen all day baking bread and canning. It also placed the laundry near the back door so the woman of the house could easily reach the back yard clothes line. Today's laundries and kitchens have changed, and the reasoning is no longer solid.

Worst:

In the basement. Carrying baskets of clothes up and down stairs is not worth the extra space. Even if you have a laundry chute, up is still a problem. All the negatives, no positives.

For the past 10-15 years, the preference in high-end homes in our area has been the second floor near the bedrooms. (First-floor masters are unheard of here.) Some local municipalities require not only an overflow pan but a dedicated drain to prevent leaks. Naturally, in my dotage I have the dubious pleasure of using a basement laundry in our vintage 1964. Stair climbing is great exercise!

We have a custom built home. Our layout is different than most- but thats why i love it! Our main bathroom is in two sections. The toilet, sink, and washer/dryer are together and the shower and family closet are together in a room behind it. it was laid out this way so that when you go in to take a shower you undress and redress immediately outside the shower- no naked runs through the house. The dirty laundry is then close to the washer/dryer and the clean laundry is close to the closets. i dont have to haul laundry baskets more than 10' either way! It also allows the rest of the family to use the toilet, sink, washer when the shower is in use. And it keeps the noise away from the bedrooms too.