I was having a chat with some friends and we were talking about how, in the U.S. at least, washers are usually on the left and dryers on the right and why that might be. Someone pointed out that we wash first and then we dry. But then someone else pointed out that we are sort of primed to think in left-to-right terms already since that’s the direction in which we read. So here is my question:
Are washers usually on the right and dryers on the left in the Middle East?
US, but my washer is on the right, dryer on the left. I’ve never questioned it, lol. Though they came with the house (hey, if they ain’t broke) and I didn’t move them from where the previous owner had them.
How do the doors open? Every front load set I’ve seen comes from the factory with the doors set up to open to opposite sides, making washer left and dryer right by design. You can usually flip the dryer door for stacking but if you had them reversed they’d be right in the way, dividing both sides.
Mine’s a top load from 1997 so isn’t really an issue for me. May have to plan to shuffle them when these finally give out, though.
How about the dryer door, does it open to the middle of the two or to the side?
Are the room and door arranged so that the washer is the first thing you come to when you walk in? I’d bet this is also a factor, in addition to the left-to-right thing.
It’s decided by builders, though, when they install the hookups and vent, so this question is really about what they are thinking, not any of us.
When the W&D hookups were installed, the basement was mostly unfinished and open-plan. Previous owner put up a wall to make a laundry room. Door opens right between them, so neither are the first thing you see.
I’m just assuming it’s questionable choices made by multiple previous owners all the way down lol.
Another commenter made the point that the washer placement is influenced by where the plumbing is, and plumbing generally fans out from one location where the main enters the house, and the direction of the sewer is also a factor for the drain. This is a bigger deal than running a duct for the dryer vent, which is a one off thing not dependent on a central system. So again, it gets back to the builders one way or another.
In Tennessee Water left, Dryer right. Florida, Dryer left, washer right. Let’s be real. Its however drunk the fucker is who cuts the exhaust/ electric holes
In my rental, they built it in 2018, I moved in in 2021 and we cut a hole for the dryer exhaust in 2022. Now most would say it should have been a fire before then. Those people were thankfully wrong. Took me almost a year to realize the vent did not exist… I assumed whoever hooked up the first dryer… uh check or the worker did their job
(I keep an annual don’t fuck this shit up list, it was on there thankfully)
Original hole was through the wall, down below the house and never exited. So Iy just filled “free space” below
Interesting question. I wonder how common dryers are in the Middle East? It’s famously hot and dry there so a dryer seems a bit redundant.
Heat, alone, doesn’t dry your clothes. If you’ve ever had a blocked exhaust tube on your dryer, you’ll know that clothes can be hot and wet. You need the airflow to carry the evaporated water away.
It was frequently humid when I lived along the Persian Gulf. It’s not like the entire region is sand dunes in the middle of nowhere.
I’d like to point out that a lot of the world doesn’t even have separate (or even any) devices for drying. Especially areas like the Middle east, Africa, and Asia. It’s still very common to hang dry clothes in many warmer climates. Japan for example doesn’t use them very much because electricity prices are so high and space is so limited. They may also just be a combined washer and dryer unit in one that does both functions due to a lack of space.
In US.
Given they need different types of hookups, the washer hookup goes wherever the plumbing is, then the dryer is put in the remaining space, wherever that is.
Given that the average laundry room is generally not in the exact center of a house, it makes sense that the washer would consequently often be closer to the room entrance (because that’s more central to the house, where the plumbing is)
Not in the US; in NZ most houses will have a “wash tub” - essentially a sink in a metal cabinet specifically for doing “dirty” jobs like laundry. That will have water hookups for the washer, so that goes next to it where there is space, then the dryer will do next to that or on top of the washer.
The last few places I’ve lived in have all had the tub in a corner with space on its left, so it’s been dryer, washer, tub. Annoying, my dryer door opens to the right and the washer to the left, so it’s harder than it should be to move clothes between them
I think my biggest takeaway from this so far is that dryers are just not a thing in most of the world. So TIL that.
