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Odds are the laundry room you grew up with wasn't a laundry room at all, but a corner of the basement, surrounded by
gray concrete walls and lit by a single pull-cord light bulb.
Things have changed, and more than a little. In recent years, laundry rooms migrated upstairs, inevitably drawing the attention of interior designers and sparking the imaginations of manufacturers.
Since 2001, when front-loading washers turned the laundry appliance market on its heels, manufacturers got wise to dressing up the humble washer and dryer. It was risky. After all, who doesn't recoil at the memory of the avocado and harvest-gold appliance era?
Now, manufacturers take their style cues from the automobile industry.
"You'll notice the curved shapes and chrome accents on laundry units and the same phenomenon on the car lot," says Warrington Ellacott, senior marketing manager at Whirlpool.
"Manufacturers want to distinguish their product in the showroom the same way that automakers do."
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