Laundry Room and Mudroom Remodel: Small Space Big Return

A laundry room and mudroom remodel is the cheapest way to fix the part of your house that annoys you most often. A laundry room runs $6,000 to $17,000, averaging around $11,000. A mudroom runs $6,500 to $18,000 when you convert space you already have, and $25,000 to $50,000 if you bolt on a real addition.

Neither room appears on any cost versus value chart, which reads like bad news and isn’t. It just means the payback shows up in your morning instead of on a settlement sheet.

There’s one decision in both rooms that sets the budget before you’ve picked a single cabinet, and finishes have nothing to do with it. Get it right and a small room stays a small number. Get it wrong and a $9,000 project quietly becomes a $22,000 one.

Why two small rooms punch above their size

Think about how often you actually use each room in your house. The living room gets an hour or two in the evening. The laundry and the back door get used every single day, usually while you’re carrying something, usually in a hurry.

That’s the whole argument. These are high frequency rooms with low square footage, which is an unusual combination:

• A bad laundry setup costs you time every single day, in baskets carried down two flights, sorting done on the floor and no surface to fold on.
• A missing mudroom costs you the rest of the house, because with nowhere to drop boots, coats and bags, that stuff ends up in the kitchen, on the stairs and by the front door.

And because both rooms are small, good materials and real built ins are affordable here in a way they never are in a kitchen. Fifteen linear feet of cabinetry is a mudroom. In a kitchen it’s a corner.

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The decision that sets your budget

Here it is: do the four services already reach the spot you want the room?

A laundry needs four things. Hot and cold water, a drain, power on two separate circuits, and a path to vent the dryer outside. A mudroom needs far less, but if you want a utility sink or a washer in there, the same list applies.

If all four already reach the space, you’re remodeling. You’re buying cabinets, a counter, flooring, lighting and paint, and you land in the lower half of every range below.

If they don’t, you’re building. Now there’s a plumber running supply and waste, an electrician pulling two new circuits, someone cutting a vent through an exterior wall, drywall repair, and a permit. That’s where the second number comes from, and it’s usually $5,000 to $10,000 of work before anything decorative happens.

So before you look at a single photo for inspiration, go find out where your drain, your electrical panel and your nearest exterior wall are. That answer picks the room for you, and it’s the same thing that drives most surprise costs in a remodel.

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What a laundry room actually needs

The pretty part is easy. These are the parts that decide whether the plan works.

Drainage

The washer drains into a 2 inch standpipe with its own trap, and the top of that standpipe generally has to sit 18 to 42 inches above the trap. That’s not a preference, it’s what keeps the machine from siphoning its own drain dry and letting sewer gas into the room.

The practical consequence: your laundry has to be within reasonable reach of a waste line. That’s the single biggest constraint on where the room can go.

Power, two circuits not one

• The washer wants its own 120 volt, 20 amp laundry circuit, and receptacles in a laundry area need GFCI protection under current code cycles.
• An electric dryer needs a dedicated 240 volt, 30 amp circuit of its own. A gas dryer still needs a 120 volt outlet plus a gas line.

Two circuits, from the panel, is a real electrical job in an older house with a full panel. Ask about panel capacity early rather than late.

The dryer vent

Vents must be 4 inch smooth rigid metal, ducted to the outside, with a maximum developed length of about 35 feet, and every bend counts against that total. The flexible foil accordion hose sold in hardware stores is not what belongs inside a wall.

Shorter is better than merely legal. Long, twisty runs collect lint, slow drying times and are a genuine fire risk. If your dream location is 30 feet and four elbows from the nearest exterior wall, pick a different spot.

A pan, if there’s finished space below

Put a washer above a finished room and most jurisdictions want a drain pan underneath it. A pan has to send water somewhere, so that means either a drain line to the outside or to a waste connection, or an approved leak sensor that shuts the supply off. Confirm which your municipality accepts before the floor closes up.

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Moving the laundry out of the basement

In older homes around here, the laundry is in the basement, and it’s in the basement for a reason: that’s where the drain and the original service entrance were. Moving it up is the most common laundry request there is, and it’s worth being clear eyed about.

What you gain is the carrying. If the laundry sits near the bedrooms, the baskets stop making two trips a day up and down the stairs, and everyone can put away their own clothes. Buyers respond to it too, because it’s the single most requested laundry location.

What it costs is that the four services now have to reach a second floor spot: waste line, supplies, two circuits, a vent through an exterior wall, and almost certainly a pan.

What nobody mentions is noise. A spin cycle on a joisted floor above a bedroom is loud in a way a basement never was. Ask for a solid core door, insulation in the wall cavity, and an anti vibration pad under the machines. It’s a small line item that decides whether you like the room.

A middle path worth considering: a first floor laundry closet off a hallway or in a wide mudroom, with a stacked pair behind bifold doors. You get most of the convenience, the plumbing run is far shorter than going to the second floor, and a laundry closet can be built for $1,200 to $2,400 where the services already exist.

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What makes a mudroom actually work

A mudroom fails when it’s designed as furniture instead of as a system. The ones that work have the same four parts.

• A bench at sitting height, roughly 17 to 19 inches, deep enough to actually sit on. This is where boots come off, and if there’s nowhere to sit, boots come off in the kitchen.
• Open hooks rather than a closet rod, because nobody hangs a wet coat on a hanger. Double height hooks, low ones for kids and high ones for adults, are what actually get used.
• Closed storage above and open below, so cubbies or drawers under the bench take the shoes and closed uppers hide the seasonal things.
• A floor that takes abuse, which is the specification that matters most in this climate.

The floor, specifically

Six months of snow, slush and road salt come through that door on boots every year. Salt is hard on finished hardwood and it’s hard on grout.

Porcelain tile or luxury vinyl plank are the two answers, and for a 120 square foot mudroom the flooring lands between $300 and $2,400 installed. Whatever you pick, insist on a proper transition into the adjoining room so meltwater stops at the mudroom instead of wicking into the kitchen floor.

Where it goes

Most older homes here have no mudroom because the back door opens straight into the kitchen. Three routes out of that:

1. Convert existing space such as a back hallway, a pantry or a corner of an oversized kitchen. Cheapest by far at roughly $50 to $100 per square foot.
2. Convert a closet into a drop zone, which averages $3,600 to $7,200 and is the smallest real version of this project.
3. Bump out an addition, which runs $25,000 to $50,000 because it needs a foundation, a roof, walls and a door.

Mudrooms cost slightly more per square foot than a standard addition, because they’re almost entirely built in storage and durable floor. They’re also small, so the total stays reasonable.

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What it costs in 2026

Project	Typical cost
Laundry room remodel, full range	$6,000 to $17,000
Laundry room remodel, average	about $11,000
Minor laundry refresh (paint, appliances)	$1,500 to $5,000
Laundry room, per square foot	$140 to $250
Small laundry closet remodel (about 20 sq ft)	$2,300 to $5,000
Creating a laundry closet where services exist	$1,200 to $2,400
Mudroom, typical project	$6,500 to $18,000
Mudroom, average	about $12,000
Mudroom, per square foot	$100 to $300
Converting existing space to a mudroom	$50 to $100 per sq ft
Closet to mudroom conversion	$3,600 to $7,200
Mudroom addition (new footprint)	$25,000 to $50,000
Mudroom flooring, 120 sq ft	$300 to $2,400

A full laundry build out with brand new plumbing, two new circuits and a new vent can run above the $17,000 top of the range. That’s the same services question again, showing up in the number.

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Permits in Pennsylvania

Most of this work needs a permit, and it’s not a close call.

Under 34 Pa. Code 403.62, an ordinary repair doesn’t need a permit, but the code names four things that specifically aren’t ordinary repairs. One of them is adding to or relocating water supply, sewer, drainage, waste or vent piping, electric wiring or mechanical. That’s a plain description of a laundry relocation.

• Needs a permit: moving the laundry, adding a standpipe, running a dryer circuit, adding a new vent through the wall, cutting into a load bearing wall for an opening.
• Usually doesn’t: painting, new flooring, new cabinets and new lighting fixtures on existing circuits in a room that already has its services.

In Wilkes-Barre the fee follows the cost of the work: $59.50 under $2,500, $114.50 up to $4,999.99, $169.50 up to $7,499.99, $224.50 up to $9,999.99, plus a $4.50 state training fee. Nearby municipalities set their own schedules, and some run building, electrical, plumbing and HVAC as four separate applications with a different inspector for each. Our guide to when a remodel needs a permit covers the wider rules.

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What a laundry room and mudroom remodel actually pays back

Neither room shows up in the resale studies, so the payback splits three ways.

What buyers notice: having a laundry somewhere convenient at all. A house with no reasonable laundry location is a mark against it, and a laundry near the bedrooms is the arrangement people ask for. A mudroom or a genuine drop zone reads as a well thought out house, especially in a climate with real winters.

What buyers don’t pay extra for: a second laundry hookup added to a finished basement, or high end finishes in either room. Both are convenience, not value.

What you get either way is the daily return, which in these two rooms is unusually large. That’s the same tradeoff that runs through bedroom and living room projects, where the money comes back in living rather than in listing.

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How to decide

• If your laundry is in the basement, and the services can reach the first floor, a first floor laundry closet is the best value on this list. Short plumbing run, big daily difference.
• If you want it on the second floor, price the full services run first, then decide. Budget for the pan and the sound control from the start rather than adding them later.
• If your back door opens into the kitchen, convert something before you consider an addition. A hallway, a pantry or a wide corner gets you 80 percent of a mudroom for a fraction of an addition’s cost.
• If you’re doing both, do them together. They usually share a wall, a floor and often the same plumbing wall, and one permit and one crew is cheaper than two.
• If the services can’t get there, spend the money on a room that can be fixed rather than forcing the one that can’t. There’s a whole directory of projects by room worth comparing before you commit.

Whichever way you go, get a written scope that names the plumbing run, the circuits, the vent path and the permit before anyone quotes a price. In these two rooms the invisible work is most of the work, and a quote that doesn’t mention it isn’t a quote.

If you’re thinking about a laundry or mudroom project on a Wilkes-Barre or Luzerne County home, we’re happy to come look at where your services actually run and tell you what’s realistic before you plan around it.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a laundry room remodel cost?

A laundry room remodel runs $6,000 to $17,000, averaging about $11,000, or roughly $140 to $250 per square foot. A minor refresh with paint and new appliances lands at $1,500 to $5,000, and a small laundry closet remodels for about $2,300 to $5,000. Adding all new plumbing, circuits and venting pushes a project above the top of that range.

How much does it cost to add a mudroom?

A typical mudroom project runs $6,500 to $18,000, averaging around $12,000, at $100 to $300 per square foot. Converting existing space is much cheaper at $50 to $100 per square foot, and turning a closet into a drop zone averages $3,600 to $7,200. A true addition with a new foundation and roof runs $25,000 to $50,000.

Does a laundry room add value to a home?

Having a convenient laundry location adds value, and having none is a real mark against a house. A laundry near the bedrooms is what buyers ask for most. Upgraded finishes in the room don’t add much on their own, and a second laundry hookup in a basement is convenience rather than value.

Is a mudroom worth it?

For a house in a snowy climate with kids, pets or a back door that opens into the kitchen, yes. It keeps wet coats, boots and bags out of the rest of the house, which is a daily benefit rather than a resale one. Buyers read a good drop zone as a well planned house.

Can you move a laundry room upstairs?

Usually yes, if a waste line, water supply, two circuits and a vent path can reach the location. Expect a drain pan under the machines because there’s finished space below, and plan for sound control, since a spin cycle above a bedroom is loud. The plumbing run is what decides whether it’s practical.

Do you need a drain pan under a second floor washer?

Most jurisdictions require one when the washer sits above finished space. A pan also needs somewhere to send water, which means a drain line or an approved leak sensor that shuts off the supply. Confirm which your municipality accepts before the floor is closed up.

How long can a dryer vent be?

The maximum developed length is about 35 feet, and every bend counts against that total, so a run with several elbows is effectively much shorter. The duct must be 4 inch smooth rigid metal vented to the outside. Shorter runs dry faster, collect less lint and are safer.

Do I need a permit to move a laundry room in Pennsylvania?

Yes. The state code names relocating water supply, drainage, waste or vent piping and electric wiring as work that isn’t an ordinary repair, which covers a laundry move exactly. Painting, flooring and cabinets in a room that already has its services generally don’t need one. Check with your municipality, since local rules can be stricter.

How small can a laundry room be?

A stacked washer and dryer fits in a closet roughly 30 inches wide and 32 inches deep, plus clearance for the door and the vent behind. A side by side pair needs about 60 inches of width. Anything smaller works only as a hookup, with folding and sorting happening somewhere else.

Can a laundry room and mudroom be the same room?

Often the best answer, especially in an older home where space is tight. They share a back door location, a durable floor and frequently a plumbing wall, and combining them means one project, one permit and one crew. Keep the bench and the hooks clear of the appliance doors so both jobs still work.