Laundry Room

The laundry room is the wall you will look at most often in your house, and almost never for longer than a minute. A living room print gets a long look a few times a week; this one gets a four-second look several times a day, for years, usually while your hands are full. That inverts the usual advice. Detail you would have to stand still to enjoy is wasted here. What holds up is a shape you can read instantly and still not be tired of on the four hundredth pass.

Which is why this page is mostly foliage in pairs and threes: eucalyptus and silver dollar sets in sage and green, navy leaf sets of two, three and four, a turquoise fern pair, abstract blue leaves, and the striped hydrangea pairs in blue, pink, purple and green. There are two quote prints — Hello Gorgeous and Hello Beautiful — plus a blue peony pair, a blush botanical portrait and a head-of-flowers piece for the stranger end of it.

All watercolour, printed to order on heavy matte paper and shipped unframed in seven sizes from 5x7 in (12.7 x 17.8 cm) to 16x20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm): singles about CA$14–47, pairs about CA$26–84, sets of three about CA$38–124 and sets of four about CA$44–158. The two quote prints are also sold as an instant digital download from about CA$4.50.

What size fits above a washing machine?

Measure the gap rather than the wall. A laundry wall is interrupted — a machine about 85 cm (34 in) high, a shelf or cabinet above it, a vent, a tap, a socket — so the usable space is usually a band 30 to 45 cm (12 to 18 in) deep rather than an open rectangle. Two 8x10 in (20.3 x 25.4 cm) prints side by side fit that band where one 16x20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm) does not. If the laundry is a cupboard rather than a room, a single 5x7 in (12.7 x 17.8 cm) on the end wall is the honest answer.

Will the heat and lint from a dryer damage an unframed print?

Dry heat and airborne lint are the laundry problem, and it is a different problem from a bathroom's steam. Paper copes well with warm dry air. What it copes badly with is fine dust settling on an open surface and then being wiped off. Keep a print a hand's width clear of a dryer vent, and if it is going directly above a machine, put glass or acrylic in front of it so the surface can be cleaned with a cloth. Everything here ships unframed, so that decision is yours to make once it arrives.

Is a quote print a good idea in a laundry room?

This is one of the few rooms where I think it genuinely is. A sentence on a living room wall gets read once and then becomes furniture. A sentence you pass four times a day, while doing a chore you did not choose, gets read again each time, which is the whole point of putting words on a wall. One is plenty, though. Two sentences in a small room start arguing with each other.

Nearby: bathroom and powder room art for the damp half of the same problem, eucalyptus prints if the foliage is what you came for, and quote prints for the full set of sentences.