Self-service laundry

A self-service laundry, coin laundry, or coin wash, is a facility where clothes and some household textiles are washed and dried without much personalized professional help. They are known in the United Kingdom as launderettes or laundrettes, and in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as laundromats. In Texas and other parts of the south central United States, the term washateria is still used by some older speakers. The first laundromat opened on April 18, 1934 in Fort Worth, Texas.

While 85% of households in the United States have laundry machines, self-service laundries are used by people who do not have their own machines. Even those who have their own machines sometimes use them for large bedding and other items that cannot fit into residential washers and dryers. Some multifamily dwellings have self-service laundry facilities available for use by tenants.

Laundromats are an essential business in urban communities. Laundromat owners may employ someone to oversee and maintain the general laundromat throughout the day. Some laundries employ staff to provide service for the customers. Minimal service centres may simply provide an attendant behind a counter to provide change, sell laundry detergent, and watch unattended machines for potential theft of clothing. If the business is big enough, the owner may employ a plumber to constantly maintain the machines and other workings.

Others allow customers to drop off clothing to be washed, dried, and folded. This is often referred to as fluff & fold, wash-n-fold, drop off, bachelor bundles, a service wash or full-service wash. Some staffed laundry facilities also provide dry cleaning pick-up and drop-off. There are over 35,000 laundries throughout the United States. Similar services exist in the United Kingdom where the terms service wash or full-service wash are also in use. The evolution of self-serve laundry services have been seen in some "fluff and fold" (also styled fluff n fold, fluff & fold, fluff 'n' fold, and fluff 'n fold) services provided by various laundromats. These services provide the end user with washing, drying, and folding services on a per pound basis, where the dry laundry is weighed before washing and services are billed on the basis of that weight. Some services offer free pickup and delivery, as well as complimentary laundry bags as part of their customer appreciation. Additionally, dry-cleaning services have been known to utilize the pickup and delivery as a means to help generate additional revenue.

On-premise laundromats are found in locations such as hotels, hospitals, student residences at universities, or apartment blocks. Facility managers/maintenance staff work directly with machine distributors to supply and maintain washers and dryers. Use of the machines are reserved for the residents of these facilities.

Many building owners use on-premise laundromats as a way to increase revenue. They can do this through renting their laundry room to laundry companies for a fixed monthly price allowing the laundry company to keep all revenue from the machines. Building owners also have the option to create a revenue sharing system where the apartment owner and laundry company split the profits from the machines each month.

In Spain, self-service laundries are available and popular mainly in Burgos, where there is a large network of laundromats.

In Andorra, self-service laundries are widely available and in use by a good percentage of the population. Due to its cold weather, Andorra has a much larger percentage of dryer owners, as the cold weather doesn't allow for hanging laundry outside for most of the year, with the exception of a few months. The long Andorra winter sees a large usage of drying machines, also easily found in self-service laundries.