I am very interested in the responses to this... I have a room I am considering remodeling to become a mudroom/utility room + potential 1/2 bath (and am currently looking for feedback on my layout). My room is 8.5x14... So, same sort of idea.
What will be in your mudroom? laundry too? Or, just cubbies, shoes, jackets, etc.?

Do you have another bathroom accessible for people who might need to use the bathroom that wouldn't need to come all the way into the house (gardeners, etc.)?

Do you have pets? We have no kids (yet) but we have 2 dogs and we wanted a big mudroom for dog stuff (grooming tub) and for cubbies for our stuff and organizers for mail. We fit a lot in our mudroom thanks to our genius cabinet maker but one of my few regrets w/ the new build is that I didn't reconfigure the floor plan, moving the bathroom and making the mudroom bigger. Oh well.

Thanks for the responses. Yes, I have 4 children under 10 so there will be mud and snow coming into the house. Also, I have another "more formal" half bathrooom on that floor near the front entrance area.

The laundry will be on the 2nd floor so the mudroom will be a place for cubbies and hooks for jackets

Seeing the overall plan would help :)

Here's mine, which is for a farmhouse remodel, on 80 acres. The shaded areas are deck and (my hastily sketched greenhouse LOL) but the overall plan is from Summerfield.

The mudroom is for tool storage, bench with hooks and cubbies. From there, you go into the pantry/sink area and that goes into the dining room, or back over to the utility/powder room. We do a lot of gardening, have horses and there's snow/mud about 7 months of the year. So, we really NEED a mudroom! {{gwi:1500129}}From Lavender Lass farmhouse pictures

Inspiration for bench in mudroom {{gwi:1500131}}From Lavender Lass farmhouse pictures

We have 2 half baths- one in the mudroom and one formal one by the front entry. I wouldn't give up my mudroom powder room. In fact, I regret doing the formal powder room-the mudroom one gets used alot more. You only need 5 x 6 for a powder room so depending on the layout, you might be able to carve some storage in that space.

It might also depend upon what type of work you do. I am a retired residential & commercial plumber and you do not want to know what was on my clothes and person when I came home at night.Especially if I happened to work at some place like the chicken slaughter house that day.

In the mud room we had a small parsons bench with a copper pan inside the box base and a coat rack on one wall. It was so nice to come in, hang up my coat and sit on that bench while taking my nasty work boots off and put them in the box overnight. I could then step into the 1/2bath and grab a quick shower, then put on a clean pair of slacks and a shirt from the tiny closet in the 1/2 bath.

We also had a swinging door type chute through the 1/2bath wall into the laundry room on the opposite side of the wall. After my shower I could just stuff the dirty work clothes through the shoot and I was ready to enter the main part of the house without worrying about what all those nasty footprints following me might be, or what would fall off my clothing as I went through the house.

we have a half bath just outside of the mudroom, shared with the kitchen. i didn't want to have to open the door to the mudroom in order to use the bathroom. i don't think it's such a big deal to have it contained in the room. point of information: i had a very large trough sink installed in the half bath. it's got a great utilitarian look and serves as a great out-of-the-way place to soak roasting pans. and i think it looks cool.

If you want a powderroom and to keep your mudroom as large as possible, 5'x5' will accommodate an elongated toilet and a 32" wide vanity sink. If you're willing to have a smaller sink, you can shave the width down even more. With a round bowl toilet, you can cut the length down to 4.5 ft. About the smallest you can go (with sink and toilet sitting side by side and door on the opposite wall) is 4'x 4.5'

Or, if you put the sink and toilet on opposite walls (facing each other) and put an out-swingind door or a pocket door on the side wall, you can fit an elongated toilet and a nice sized vanity sink in a room that is 32" wide by 70".

Not saying you would want your powder room to be the minimum size possible but you certainly don't have to use up 5'x8' of the space you have for a powderroom. A full bathroom (toilet, vanity, AND tub/shower) will fit into a 5'x7' space so why use up 5'x8' just for a powder-room.

Depending on your layout, you might want to do a 3'x 8' powderroom - which would be spacious enough that the door could swing into the P.R. - AND have a 10'x8' mudroom.

We will have two powder rooms as well - a more formal one near the entertaining spaces and a back hall half bath near the garage (what I grew up calling the mud bath ;)). We have 3 little boys and will live in the woods so this is the one they will use when coming in from outside, washing up for dinner, etc. It is also where I will clean up when I have been working in the yard, etc.

I think if you decide to put a half bath in there, it will be the most used one in your house . . .

Both! But, no, you don't need that much space for a powder room, so you'll be fine.

I'm campaigning to put an end to the term "mudroom". It's a Back Hall, peeps! It's the 'drop zone' for coats, boots, the dog's leash, and outgoing stuff like mail, books, returns. It's the family 'staging area'. It gets ten times the use of most formal foyers. Plan for that.

Our back hall has access from kitchen, garage and back door. We have four toilets; the one in the back hall toilet needs a new roll of TP most often.

We only have 1 powder room, and it is near the "family/garage entrance". It's a perfect location for us. We are empty nesters, so it's stays clean. I personally don't like powder rooms right off the entertaining area. I like it in a more "private" location. I know I'm in the minority on that one.

I would opt for a mudroom with a utility sink.

Chisue- I can see your point about some mudrooms, being back halls or entrances from the garage...but sometimes they are mudrooms. We have lots of mud in spring and fall (all clay out there) but snow can be around up to five months...so maybe I should call mine a snow room :)

Joyce I don't know if you're in the minority by liking powder rooms removed from the main entertaining area. I also like a private, yet still handy, location. Our old PR was between the kitchen and DR, across from the butler pantry and I HATED it in that location. Too much likelihood of noise traveling IMO. No adults ever seemed to want to use it when we had company, including me. So we demo'd it when we remodeled and moved it out to the addition, basically back to back from where it was but a much better location -- it's 2 steps down and a few feet down the back hall from the kitchen.

OK, then my 'mud room' would have to be on a lower level, with a floor drain, where I could hose it down!

chisue,
Would you include laundry room in your new description of mudroom? Or, do you include laundry area in another place? I am trying to figure out if having laundry equipment in my "landing zone"/hallway is unrealistic. (See my last post on my posting about what I was thinking for my room. Too much?)

Here is a link that might be useful: laundry/mud room

Floor drain...excellent idea! Hose down the mud or let the snow melt. LOL

I like a laundry room that I can close off from the rest of the house. I wouldn't care for a combo room (laundry/mud/powder) I don't think but clutter really bothers me ;). With dirty, sweaty boys I do a lot of laundry and there is almost always a laundry basket with clothes to be put away in there. . . I prefer to shut the door on it rather than have to walk by it to use the restroom or hang up my coat/purse, but that is just me. That is also the reason I didn't want lockers in my hallway - I have a separate mudroom in the back hall with a door I can close in case of company. I didn't want the first view in from my garage to be of backpacks and lunch boxes ;). Instead, everyone has to take a couple of extra steps to hang up their stuff, which is no different than they do now, and I get a view from my garage entrance of my breakfast table and french doors to the outside . . .

I know this wouldn't work for everyone (there were plenty of people who wanted me to change my mudroom to something you would walk through to enter the house) but I know myself well enough to know that that would drive me nuts ;). I also know this doesn't work for everyone, so think of how you live and your comfort level with clutter because both laundry rooms and mud rooms seem to attract it, at least in my house!

kirkhall -- Our 'back hall' is a long rectangle 8 X 21, built along one side of the garage. Doors to garage and kitchen are opposite one another near the middle of the long sides. Laundry area with window is at one end of the rectangle. A deep, double-door closet runs along the garage side at the other end, with half-glass door to the back yard. A 3 X 7 powder room is opposite the closet -- space taken from the breakfast room - sink and toilet opposite one another. One enters the hall to use the powder room. I'm unable to hear the toilet flushing from breakfast room or kitchen.

I didn't separate the laundry end with wall and door, but you could. Guests don't enter via this door. We are just two adults here; you'd want a larger space with your family. My laundry sink, washer and dryer are along the inside wall with cabinets above the W/D; upper and lower cabinets are on the garage-side wall. Leave some floor space for a bench, dog dishes, waste basket, shredder, etc.

We don't have a door to separate the mudroom / laundry but we angled the wall leading into it, so from the kitchen you mainly see the angled wall and the back door. The door to the powder room is off that hall, then beyond that are the washer,dryer, sink, and cubby/hooks area. We did a large Kohler sink in a nice cabinet with granite counter rather than what you might think of as a utility sink, since this is the area you see when entering from the back door. We also used what we think is cool tile, since the hall to the area is visible from the kitchen.

In retrospect, I wish we had done a pocket half door as we sometimes like to keep the dog confined to that area when we have guests. (But the dog came after the mudroom, so I didn't think of it.)

{{gwi:1397962}}

Thank you Chisue, I think I can picture what you describe. That is helpful to me.

Also, Chicagoans, your picture and description is also helpful to me although, I wonder how long your hallway is (that is pictured), and if your washer/dryer pair sit parallel to it or perpendicular to the wall along a wall? That would help me a little. (Overall dimensions might help both of us posters--the original OP and myself).

Thanks!

Hi kirkhall,

I don't know if this will help much, but here's the floor plan. It changed a bit because we made the great room and mudroom (marked Laundry) another 2 feet deep; I can't remember if this is a redraw or if they just changed the numbers on the previous plan. That hall is maybe 17 feet or so from the steps to the back door. The W/D are back to back with the powder room wall. A bench, hooks and cubbies are across from the W/D on the back wall.

We went with front loading washer and dryer, and stacked them to have room for the sink cabinet. Not ideal for some people, but we're tall and it was a compromise we were willing to make (plus we have another laundry room in the basement.) This was an addition (all the black walls) so we had to work with the existing floorplan.

It actually worked out pretty well because we did 2 stories so the majority of our new master bedroom (except the WIC and sitting/office area) are over the great room, and the new master bath is over the mudroom. I'd love more room in the mudroom, but I'm happy to have it at all! We used to come straight in from the back door to the kitchen, which was a pain.

{{gwi:1500136}}

Thank you Chicagoans,
That does help me some. My reconfiguration stems from a 2 story addition we did also. When we did our addition, we only finished the bottom floor, so now I am asking for help for upstairs and one of the suggestions by a well-known GWer in the Build forum has a layout with the master suite over our Great room as well. Do you like that?
(Also, sorry to OP for all these f/us that are marginally related to your post). :/