Laundromats are profitable for most owners who run them well. The median store grosses around $335,000 a year and keeps roughly 27% of that as net operating profit, and about 95% of laundromats survive their first five years.1Coin Laundry Association. 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey Typical net margins land between 20% and 35%. That’s strong for a retail business, but the average hides a wide spread: a store in the wrong neighborhood with tired equipment loses money as reliably as a well-placed one prints it. Whether you land at the top or bottom of the range comes down to location, how much you spend to get open, and how tightly you run three cost categories once you are.
What the Median Store Actually Earns
The median laundromat operates around 2,740 square feet with about 62 machines and brings in roughly $335,000 a year, or about $120 per square foot.1Coin Laundry Association. 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey Smaller retooled stores pull in $100,000 to $200,000; high-volume urban locations clear $500,000 or more. Net operating profit at the median works out to somewhere around $85,000 to $95,000.
The number that drives the whole model is turns per day, meaning how many paid cycles each washer runs in 24 hours. Low-density suburban markets manage two to three. A stable suburban site does three to four. Dense urban neighborhoods with steady foot traffic hit four to six or higher. You can rough out monthly washer income by multiplying machine count, vend price, turns, and days in the month. Dryer income adds another 33% to 50% on top of the washer number.
Owners who layer wash-and-fold or commercial accounts onto the base self-service model push well past the median. Labor rises with them, so the margin doesn’t always climb in proportion, but total dollars do.
Why Location Sets the Ceiling
The financial ceiling of any laundromat is largely fixed by the demographics inside a one-to-three-mile radius. Operational skill can move you within that ceiling; it cannot break through it.
The single most useful indicator is the renter-to-homeowner ratio. Homeowners generally have their own washers and dryers. Renters often don’t.2Coin Laundry Association. Demographic Analysis and Site Selection for Self-Service Laundries Neighborhoods dense with apartments and multi-family housing feed the most reliable customer base. Population density matters too; a common benchmark is at least 10,000 residents within a short driving distance, though a store surrounded almost entirely by renters can thrive on fewer.
Household size drives revenue per visit. Larger families use bigger machines more often. Income shapes the service mix: lower-income areas produce heavy self-service traffic, while moderate-income neighborhoods often support profitable wash-and-fold. Competition is the other half. Too many stores fighting for the same renters means everyone’s turns per day fall. The best sites tend to be underserved pockets where renter density outpaces available machine capacity. Before you commit, count every competitor within three miles and compare their combined machine count to the local renter population.
Where the Money Goes
Three categories eat 60% to 70% of gross revenue. How well you control them decides where you land in the profit range.
Utilities
Water, natural gas, and electricity run about 20% to 21% of gross revenue at the median store.1Coin Laundry Association. 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey Gas-heated water is the biggest single draw, followed by electricity for dryers and lighting. Older machines can push utility costs above 25% because they use more water per cycle and take longer to heat. Swapping aging top-loaders for modern high-extraction washers is one of the fastest ways to lift margins at an established location.
Rent
Most operators target rent at 20% to 25% of gross sales.3Coin Laundry Association. The Laundry Owner’s Guide to Leases The median monthly rent is around $4,000, though that swings widely by market. Lease structure matters as much as the headline number. A triple-net lease passes property taxes, insurance, and common-area maintenance through to you on top of base rent. Some landlords include percentage rent clauses that trigger above a revenue threshold, effectively giving them part of your upside.
Lease length is a make-or-break term. A laundromat needs time to recover its equipment investment, so short leases without renewal options are a deal-killer. Experienced operators want at least ten years of total commitment including renewals.
Labor
Staffing costs average 20% to 22% of gross revenue at attended stores, with the median non-management attendant earning around $15.50 per hour.1Coin Laundry Association. 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey The federal minimum under the Fair Labor Standards Act is $7.25 per hour, but most states set higher rates and competition for workers pushes actual pay above the legal floor in nearly every market.4U.S. Department of Labor. State Minimum Wage Laws Unattended stores eliminate this expense almost entirely, but they also forfeit the wash-and-fold revenue that staffing makes possible.
Insurance and Maintenance
General liability and property insurance cover slip-and-fall claims, fire, and equipment damage. If you offer wash-and-fold, you’re temporarily holding customers’ clothing, which creates bailee liability; most insurers recommend bailee’s coverage for any store handling customer garments. Maintenance covers routine servicing of washers, dryers, water heaters, drainage, and lint traps. A washer down for a week costs the repair bill plus every cycle it would have run, so a reserve fund for emergency repairs is one of the quieter drivers of consistent profit.
Layering Revenue on Top of Self-Service
Self-service vend income is the foundation. Standard top-loaders run $2.50 to $4.00 per cycle; large-capacity front-loaders for comforters and rugs command higher prices. The stores that earn the most per square foot stack additional revenue on top.
Wash-and-fold is usually the biggest lift available. The median drop-off rate is about $1.50 per pound, with pickup and delivery services closer to $1.90 per pound.1Coin Laundry Association. 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey Most owners set a ten-pound minimum to keep the labor economics viable. It shifts the business from passive to actively managed but captures customers who would never use a self-service store.
Commercial contracts with spas, restaurants, gyms, and medical offices bring predictable weekly volume that can run during off-peak hours when machines would otherwise sit idle. Per-pound margins are lower than retail drop-off, but the volume and consistency make it worthwhile whenever a store has unused machine time.
Card and mobile payment systems change the revenue picture on their own. Stores using card-based systems report 15% to 30% higher revenue per machine than coin-only operations, largely because customers spend more freely when they aren’t limited by the quarters in their pocket. Processing fees run 1.5% to 3.5% per swipe; some owners run closed-loop prepaid cards where customers load value at a kiosk, which avoids per-transaction fees after the initial load and cuts theft risk. Vending machines for detergent, fabric softener, and snacks add modest but high-margin income relative to the space they take up.
Attended vs. Unattended: The Model Decision
This choice shapes everything from your margin to how much of your own time the store consumes.
Unattended laundromats have lower operating costs and higher margins on self-service revenue. They scale more easily because you don’t need staff at each location, and they’re closer to genuinely passive income. The trade-offs: you’re capped at self-service vend revenue, you’re more exposed to vandalism and machine abuse, and the customer experience is entirely self-directed.
Attended stores cost more to run because payroll takes 20% or more of gross revenue. But staffing unlocks wash-and-fold, commercial accounts, and a cleaner environment that pulls in customers who would skip an unstaffed store. Attended locations generally produce higher revenue per customer even after labor. Which model wins depends on the market. Dense urban neighborhoods with strong drop-off demand usually justify the labor cost; smaller markets where self-service volume alone supports the store keep more of every dollar by running unattended.
What It Costs to Get Started
Startup cost is the single biggest variable in how quickly a laundromat turns profitable. Two paths, very different price tags.
- Buying and retooling an existing location runs $50,000 to $100,000 in cash. It’s the lowest barrier to entry, but older plumbing and electrical systems can hide expensive surprises.
- Building new starts around $250,000 and can exceed $1 million for a large modern facility. New builds typically require 30% to 40% of total project cost as a down payment if you’re financing.
Equipment is the largest line. A store with 30 to 40 washers and 25 to 30 dryers can easily carry $200,000 to $400,000 in machines alone, before utility hookups and deposits, construction, payment kiosks, signage, insurance, and legal fees. The upside of spending on new, efficient equipment is lower water and gas use and fewer breakdowns, both of which improve margin from day one.
The Section 179 Tax Break
Laundromats benefit disproportionately from a federal provision that lets equipment-heavy businesses write off purchases quickly. Under Section 179 of the Internal Revenue Code, you can deduct the full purchase price of qualifying equipment in the year you put it into service rather than depreciating it over many years.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 179 – Election to Expense Certain Depreciable Business Assets Commercial washers, dryers, water heaters, card payment systems, and change machines all qualify.6Internal Revenue Service. Depreciation Expense Helps Business Owners Keep More Money For 2026, the maximum deduction is $1,250,000, with a phase-out once total qualifying property exceeds a higher threshold. On a $200,000 to $400,000 equipment build, the full cost can likely be deducted in year one, which materially lowers your tax burden when cash flow is tightest.
Buying an Existing Store: What the Multiples Look Like
Valuation of an existing laundromat usually turns on seller’s discretionary earnings (SDE), the total financial benefit the business delivers to one owner-operator. Rough multiples as of 2026:
- Single-store coin operations under $200,000 in SDE trade at 2.5 to 3.5 times SDE.
- Modernized card-system stores earning $200,000 to $500,000 in SDE trade at 3.5 to 5 times SDE.
- Multi-store operators at $500,000 or more trade at 4.5 to 6 times EBITDA.
Equipment age can swing the multiple by a full point. Machines under seven years old command meaningfully more than 15-year-old equipment because the buyer knows major replacement is years away. When the seller owns the real estate and includes it in the sale, valuations trend to the upper end. If the seller keeps the property, expect the lower end and negotiate the lease carefully, because the lease you inherit will set your rent expense for years.
SBA 7(a) loans are a common financing vehicle for these purchases, with a maximum loan amount of $5 million and terms up to 25 years when real estate is included.7U.S. Small Business Administration. 7(a) Loans Acquisitions over $500,000 generally require at least a 10% down payment; smaller deals or retooling projects usually call for proportionally more equity from you.
The Short Answer
A laundromat can absolutely make money, and by small-business standards it makes money reliably. The 27% median net margin and 95% five-year survival rate are the strongest numbers in the file. What decides whether your store hits those figures is the site you pick, the shape of your lease, whether you go attended or unattended, and how disciplined you are on utilities and labor once you’re open. Get the location and lease right and the operating math tends to follow. Get them wrong and no amount of good management makes up the difference.