---
title: How to Size an In-House Commercial Laundry
description: Learn how to size an in-house commercial laundry based on workload, throughput, item type and the way your operation actually runs.
image: https://news.sqcommercial.com.au/hubfs/Laundry%20Size%20opt.png
---

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# How Much Laundry Equipment Do You Actually Need?

![Laundry Size opt](https://news.sqcommercial.com.au/hs-fs/hubfs/Laundry%20Size%20opt.png?width=1200&height=630&name=Laundry%20Size%20opt.png "Laundry Size opt")

## How to Size an In-House Commercial Laundry

 Sept 29, 2026 | [Community](https://news.sqcommercial.com.au/blog/tag/community), [Advice](https://news.sqcommercial.com.au/blog/tag/advice), [laundromat](https://news.sqcommercial.com.au/blog/tag/laundromat), [Commercial](https://news.sqcommercial.com.au/blog/tag/commercial)

If you're setting up or upgrading an in-house commercial laundry, one of the first questions is obvious:

**How much laundry equipment do we actually need?**

It sounds like it should have a simple answer. Work out how many kilograms of laundry you produce each day, divide that by the capacity of the machines, and start shopping.

Unfortunately, laundry doesn't cooperate quite that neatly.

Nine kilograms of flat sheets and nine kilograms of bulky doonas can both weigh exactly the same. But they do not behave the same way in a commercial washer or dryer, and they certainly do not require the same practical capacity. 

 The right size for an in-house commercial laundry depends on what you're washing, how much of it you're washing, how bulky it is, how quickly it needs to be processed and how the laundry operates during the day.  Get it wrong in one direction and you're constantly chasing the laundry pile. Get it wrong in the other and you've spent money on capacity, services and floor space you don't need.

Sizing commercial laundries is something our Speed Queen distributors do all the time. And importantly, the process starts with understanding your laundry, not choosing a machine.

## Start with what you're actually washing

Before we start talking about machine capacities, we need to know what is going into them.

A hotel might predominantly process sheets, pillowcases and towels. An aged-care facility can have bedding, towels, resident clothing and continence-related linen. A food-processing operation might be dealing with uniforms, aprons, cleaning cloths and other heavily soiled items.

These are very different laundry loads.

**Weight is useful, but weight alone doesn't tell us how much machine capacity you need.**

Ten kilograms of dense workwear and ten kilograms of bulky bedding both weigh ten kilograms. They certainly don't occupy the same amount of space in a washer. Laundry needs room to move inside the drum for effective washing, so bulky items can reach the practical capacity of a machine long before they reach its rated weight.

That's why one of the first things we'll ask isn't simply *"How many kilograms do you wash?"*

We'll ask:

**"What do you wash?"**

### What does a kilogram of laundry actually look like?

This is one of the difficulties when planning a commercial laundry. Most businesses don't weigh every load.

People are much more likely to tell us:

*"We do around 80 towels a day."*

Or:

*"We turn over 35 rooms."*

Or:

*"We wash uniforms for about 60 staff."*

That's fine.

Those numbers can be translated into an estimated laundry volume once we know the size and type of the items involved. A bath towel, a bedsheet, a pair of heavy work trousers and a duvet are clearly not equivalent loads. Even two businesses washing the same number of items can produce quite different laundry volumes depending on the materials they use.

We can work with what you know.

You don't need to arrive with a spreadsheet containing the dry weight of every towel in the building.

## Next, how much laundry are you processing?

Once we understand **what** you're washing, we need to understand **how much**.

Daily volume is part of this, but we're also interested in when that volume occurs.

For example, two businesses might each process 300 kg of laundry a day. One has twelve hours available to get through it. The other needs almost everything washed, dried and ready to use again within six hours. Same daily weight. Very different laundry requirement.

We therefore look at things such as:

- typical daily laundry volumes
- busy-day volumes
- peak periods
- operating hours
- turnaround requirements
- seasonal variations
- expected growth

The aim isn't simply to build a laundry capable of processing your average day. It needs to work when the business is actually busy.

## How quickly does it need to come back?

This is where throughput becomes important.

A pile of dirty linen waiting until tomorrow might be perfectly acceptable in one business and a serious operational problem in another. A hotel needs clean linen available for housekeeping. A care facility needs clothing and linen returned into circulation. A food-processing operation may need clean uniforms ready for another shift.

So when we're sizing a laundry, we aren't simply asking:

**"How much do you wash?"**

We're asking:

**"How much do you need to wash, dry and finish within the time available?"**

That distinction can significantly change the equipment required.

## Then we look at the washers

Only now does machine capacity really enter the conversation.

The objective isn't necessarily to find a washer large enough to handle the total volume. It's to find the **right combination of washers** for the way the laundry operates.  Sometimes several smaller machines provide more flexibility than one very large machine. Different loads can run at the same time, different programs can be used, and the entire laundry isn't dependent on one washer being available.

In other situations, larger-capacity machines make far more sense. It depends on the load. It also depends on the cycles being used. A washer completing a particular load in 35 minutes can process considerably more laundry during a working day than one taking an hour.

This is why simply adding together the kilogram ratings on a row of machines can give a very misleading picture of the laundry's actual capacity.

We're interested in **usable throughput**, not just the number printed on the front of the washer.

## Washing is only half the job

A laundry isn't finished when the washer door opens.  Everything that comes out has to go somewhere.

For most in-house laundries, that means drying becomes another major part of the sizing exercise. And again, the answer isn't necessarily to install exactly the same nominal dryer capacity as washer capacity.

Different fabrics retain different amounts of moisture. Extraction performance affects how much water enters the dryer. Towels behave differently from sheets. Bulky items take up more drum volume. Some garments may need different temperatures or longer drying times.

Dryers can therefore become the bottleneck in an otherwise well-sized laundry.  A laundry capable of washing 100 kg an hour isn't particularly useful if it can only dry 50 kg in the same period.

The entire process needs to balance.

## And then there is the room itself

Machines don't operate in isolation.

The physical laundry can affect capacity almost as much as the equipment.

We look at practical issues including:

- where dirty laundry arrives
- sorting and preparation space
- movement between washers and dryers
- folding and finishing areas
- trolley access
- staffing
- hot-water capacity
- drainage
- electrical and gas services
- dryer ventilation

A badly arranged laundry can lose a surprising amount of productivity simply through unnecessary handling and movement.

This becomes particularly important when replacing or adding equipment to an existing laundry. A theoretically perfect machine combination isn't much use if the services can't support it or staff have to negotiate an obstacle course to use it.

**A commercial laundry is a system. The machines are only part of it.**

## Don't design only for a perfect Tuesday

There is one final consideration: the real world.

Machines need servicing. Businesses have unusually busy days. Hotels hit full occupancy. Staff are absent. Operations grow. You don't want so much spare capacity that you've paid for machinery you'll rarely use, but sizing a laundry to operate permanently at its theoretical maximum leaves very little room when something changes.

The right amount of capacity provides enough headroom for the operation to keep functioning without unnecessarily oversizing the laundry.

Again, there isn't one percentage that suits every business. It depends on how critical the laundry is and what happens if production falls behind.

## So, what size in-house commercial laundry do you need?

 There isn't a useful answer based on kilograms alone. As the difference between 9 kg of sheets and 9 kg of doonas shows, weight is only part of the story. 

To properly size an in-house commercial laundry, we need to understand: **what you're washing + how much you're washing + how bulky it is + how quickly it needs to be processed + the cycles required + the operating window + the physical laundry itself.**

From there, we can determine the washer and dryer combination that gives you the throughput you actually need. It may sound complicated.  For most businesses, it probably is.

**For us, it's normal.**

Our Speed Queen commercial laundry distributors size and configure in-house laundries all the time, across hospitality, aged care, healthcare, accommodation, industry, sport and many other applications.

You don't need to calculate everything before you contact us. Tell us what you're washing, roughly how much you're processing and how your operation works.

Sizing the perfect laundry configuration isn't quite as hard as solving the [Navier-Stokes Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_existence_and_smoothness)... but it does involve a lot of variables. After you've been doing it as long as our specialists have, bringing those variables together into a highly efficient operation becomes second nature.

**Talk to your local Speed Queen commercial laundry specialist. We'll help work out the rest.**

We'll help work out the rest.

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