How many machines do you need for a profitable laundromat?

Anyone who’s ever waited for a washer on a Sunday afternoon knows this feeling. You walk in, scan the room, and every machine is humming away. Half the people leave. The other half hover. That moment is where profit is either made or lost.

How many machines does a profitable laundromat usually need?

In practical terms, most profitable Australian laundromats operate with:

12–25 washers
12–20 dryers

That tends to sit comfortably in a 90–150 square metre shop. It’s also the range where utilisation stays high without blowing out rent, power, or maintenance.

Operators with 10+ years in the game will tell you the same thing quietly over a coffee: profitability isn’t about having the biggest room full of machines. It’s about having just enough to handle peaks without paying for dead weight the rest of the week.

Why “more machines” doesn’t always mean more money

This is where a bit of behavioural science sneaks in.

People anchor their decision on wait time, not machine count. If customers believe they’ll be waiting more than 5–10 minutes, many won’t start at all. But once you’ve solved that friction point, adding extra machines rarely doubles revenue.

Here’s what often happens when owners overshoot:

Machines sit unused Monday to Thursday
Power and water bills rise regardless
Maintenance costs scale with volume
The room feels empty, which quietly signals “low demand”

That last point matters. Social proof is powerful. A moderately busy laundromat feels trustworthy. A half-empty one at peak time feels like something’s wrong, even if it isn’t.

What machine mix actually drives profit?

This is where many first-timers get it wrong. They buy identical washers because it’s simple.

Profitable stores don’t do that.

A typical high-performing mix looks like:

40–50% small washers (7–9 kg) – everyday loads
30–40% medium washers (10–14 kg) – family washing
10–20% large washers (18–27 kg) – doonas, blankets, pet beds

Why? Because large machines command higher prices and solve a specific pain point. Anyone who’s wrestled a king doona into a home washer knows why they’re happy to pay more.

Dryers follow a similar logic, but fewer sizes usually suffice. What matters more is drying speed. Faster dryers mean higher turnover and better peak-hour flow.

How utilisation beats raw machine numbers

Here’s the mental shortcut seasoned operators use:
Profit follows utilisation, not capacity.

A 24-machine store running at 65–75% utilisation across the week often outperforms a 40-machine store limping along at 35–40%.

This is also where layout matters more than people expect. Clear sightlines, intuitive flow, and enough folding space reduce cognitive load. When things feel easy, people stay. When they stay, they spend.

Behaviourally, it’s the same reason supermarkets widen aisles in high-margin areas. Ease increases basket size.

Location changes everything (and the numbers with it)

A laundromat near apartments, backpacker hostels, or student housing behaves very differently to one in a suburban strip.

As a rough guide:

Location type	Typical profitable range
Inner-city apartments	25–40 machines
Suburban strip	18–30 machines
Regional town	12–24 machines

The difference isn’t population alone. It’s density and habit. Apartment dwellers use laundromats weekly. Suburban customers often treat them as a backup.

Industry data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics supports this usage gap, especially in high-density postcodes with rising renter populations (ABS household data).

The hidden profitability lever: payment systems

Here’s the part many articles skip.

Once you’ve got the right number of machines, how people pay quietly determines how hard those machines work.

Modern payment setups reduce friction:

No need to find coins
Faster machine turnover
Easier price testing
Better data on peak times

Owners consistently report higher average spend per visit once they remove payment hassle. People are more willing to add an extra wash or dryer cycle when the action takes two taps instead of digging through a car console for gold coins.

This is pure loss aversion at work. When friction feels high, people stop early to avoid “wasting” effort.

Can a small laundromat still be profitable?

Absolutely. Some of the healthiest margins I’ve seen come from 14–18 machine stores that:

Open 24/7
Sit near dense rentals
Keep machines spotless
Price confidently, not cheaply

Small stores force discipline. Every machine must earn its keep. There’s nowhere to hide bad decisions.

Bigger stores can be forgiving, but they’re also easier to mismanage quietly.

Common mistakes first-time owners make

A few patterns show up again and again:

Buying too many machines “just in case”
Ignoring large-capacity washers
Underestimating power and water upgrades
Overlooking payment friction
Copying another store without understanding the local behaviour

Anyone who’s tried to retrofit a store later knows how expensive those early assumptions can become.

So, how many machines do you really need?

The honest answer is this: enough to eliminate wait anxiety at peak times, and not one more.

For most operators, that lands squarely in the 20–40 machine range, adjusted for location and customer type. From there, profitability is shaped less by volume and more by how smoothly the experience runs.

If you’re looking at modernising operations or understanding how digital payments integrate into machine utilisation, this breakdown of a laundromat kiosk setup shows how payment flow and machine performance intersect in real-world stores: laundromat kiosk.

In the end, machines don’t make money. Behaviour does. And once you start seeing your laundromat through that lens, the numbers tend to fall into place.

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