Laundry Room Size

Service area & kitchen sizing

Under NBR 15575 (the performance standard), a family-unit kitchen should run around 6 m² or more, with a continuous countertop that's at least 60 cm deep and sits 90 cm above the finished floor. A service area (área de serviço) usually wants 3–4 m² at a minimum. That's roughly what you need to fit a 60 cm wash tank (tanque), a 60×60 cm washing machine, and still leave 80 cm of clearance in front to move around. Planning a dryer (secadora)? Budget another 60 cm or so of depth whether you stack it or set it beside the washer.

Rough footprints by setup: a tank on its own comes to about 3 m²; add a washer and you're at 3.5–4 m²; throw in a dryer too and it's 4.5–5 m². Most municipal COE (SP, MG/CIVIT, RJ, for instance) require the natural ventilation opening to be at least 1/6 of the floor area. And the room can't double as nothing more than a passage; the usable countertop and the circulation space both count toward that minimum.

Applications

Apartment design, MCMV/Minha Casa Minha Vida unit planning, NBR 15575 performance compliance, COE municipal review, retrofitting small flats, and figuring out laundry niches in studio apartments.

FAQ

Can the service area be integrated with the kitchen? Yes. An "área de serviço conjugada" is allowed, provided the combined area clears the minimums for both programs and the laundry zone keeps its own ventilation.

What is the minimum countertop length? For a kitchen that actually works, you want at least 1.20 m of free countertop beside the stove and 60 cm beside the sink. Go below that and the working triangle starts to feel cramped.

Is a window mandatory in the service area? In most municipal COE, yes. The exception is an internal room, where a mechanical exhaust venting outside (poço de ventilação) does the job instead.