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?
My dryer is on the right, but the direction the door swings makes it better that way. If it were on the left I would have trouble moving the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer without hitting the door all the time.
On my dryer, mirrored from the holes for the hinge, latch, and contact switch, there are another set of holes that have been punched out and covered with plastic caps.
I’m not 100% sure, but I think you could take off all that hardware, move the caps, and flip the door to the other side if that would work better for your setup.
Followup, are they usually stacked one atop the other in places that write using Kanji?
Been living in the US for almost exactly 40 years, never had a dryer on the right. Mostly Chicago and Detroit. I don’t think I would like the opposite. Is this really a norm I wasn’t aware of and somehow never encountered
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
