What It Costs to Open a Laundromat From Scratch

By Jason Taken, business broker · HedgeStone Business Advisors · Updated 2026-09-06 · 9 min read

Why Will Nobody Give You a Number?

Because the honest answer is a range so wide it stops being useful, and the reason is the site.

A space that previously operated as a laundromat may already have the water service, the sewer capacity, the gas supply, the ventilation and the floor drainage. A bare retail shell has none of them, and installing them is construction rather than fit-out — potentially including a utility upgrade that requires the utility's own timetable and its own cost.

The second driver is scale. The Coin Laundry Association's 2024 survey of owner-operators reported a median store of 2,740 square feet with 62 machines producing $335,000 of gross revenue (Source: CLA, 2024). A store half that size and a store twice it are entirely different capital projects.

Anyone quoting a single figure without seeing your site and your equipment list is guessing, and the guess is usually low.

What Are the Lines?

Build the estimate from quotes against this structure. Every line needs a real number from a real supplier before the project is fundable.

The last row is not a cost of construction, which is exactly why it gets left out. It is the cost of staying open until the store earns its way.

Which Lines Get Underestimated?

The utility capacity. Bringing a larger water service or a heavier gas supply to a building is not a line item you can negotiate down — the utility sets the cost and the timetable, and it can be substantial. Establish it before signing a lease, not after. See utility capacity.

Make-up air. Dryers exhaust a large volume and the building has to replace it. This is routinely missed in conversions and it is a mechanical design problem, not an afterthought.

Permitting time. Time is money when rent is running. See permitting timeline.

The ramp. A new store opens with no customers. Rent, utilities, insurance and any payroll run at full rate from day one while revenue climbs. See the ramp-up period.

Contingency. Construction on an existing building finds things. A project without a genuine contingency line is a project that will need more money at the worst moment.

How Does This Compare With Buying?

This is the comparison that matters, and it usually favors buying.

The median laundromat sold for $250,000 on median owner earnings of $76,560, across 855 reported transactions (Source: BizBuySell, 2021-2025). That price buys a store that is already trading, already permitted, with an established customer base and — critically — revenue history you can verify before you commit.

A new build starts from zero on all four. It also carries execution risk that an acquisition does not: the permits might take longer, the utility upgrade might cost more, and the location might turn out not to work.

Where building genuinely wins is where no acceptable store is for sale in a market you have researched, where you can secure a site with existing infrastructure at a favorable lease, or where you want a specific configuration nobody is selling. See buying vs building.

How Should You Sequence the Estimate?

1. Find a candidate site and establish what it already has.
2. Get the utility answers in writing before committing to the space.
3. Get a distributor's equipment quote against a specific machine list.
4. Get a contractor's build-out quote against actual drawings.
5. Get the permit list and fee schedule from the building department.
6. Model the ramp and size working capital from it.
7. Add contingency, then compare the total against what an existing store would cost.

Doing step seven honestly is what separates people who open a good store from people who open an expensive one.

What Should You Not Do?

Do not budget from an online figure. The ranges published by equipment sellers and lenders are marketing, and they are systematically optimistic about the site.

Do not sign a lease before the utility answers arrive. This is the single most expensive sequencing error available in this project.

Do not buy the equipment first. Machine selection follows the space and the utility capacity, not the other way round.

Do not fund construction and leave the ramp unfunded. A finished store with no working capital is a store that closes in month eight.

Which Costs Do First-Time Builders Underestimate?

Five, consistently, and together they account for most of the gap between a plan and a project.

The shared infrastructure. Equipment quotes cover equipment. They do not cover upsizing a water service, a gas line or the electrical supply, building ductwork to meet the dryers' airflow specification, or the floor work higher-extraction machines require. Any of these can rival the equipment cost, and all of them are established by asking, not by assuming.

Professional fees. Architect, engineer, expediter where used. These usually exceed the municipal permit fees, and skimping produces plan-check comments that cost more in delay than the saving.

Rent during construction and permitting. This is the single largest omission. Rent runs from whenever the lease says it does, and a permitting period measured in months is a period of paying for a space that earns nothing. It is also the cost most within your control — through rent commencement tied to opening, not to possession.

Working capital and the ramp. A new store opens at zero and earns customers one at a time. Rent, utilities, insurance, loan payments and your own living costs run in full from day one. That gap has to be funded before opening, because a store cannot borrow its way through a ramp nobody budgeted for.

Contingency. Not a line most people include, and the one that determines whether a surprise is a problem or a crisis.

The pattern is that the underestimated items are the ones nobody quotes you for. Equipment and construction arrive with numbers attached. The rest has to be asked about.

How Should You Build the Estimate?

In an order that lets the expensive discoveries happen before you are committed.

Establish the site's capacity first, before any design work. Water service size, sewer basis and any capacity or impact charge, gas supply and meter, electrical service. These are phone calls to the utilities, and any one of them can rule a space out or add a large number to the project. Doing this before signing a lease is the difference between choosing a site and being stuck with one.

Then get the permitting picture. Call the building department about the address: what approvals apply to a change of use, how fees are calculated, how long plan review takes, and what triggers a new certificate of occupancy.

Then design, and get contractor pricing against real drawings instead of a concept.

Then price the equipment package against a settled machine list, from several distributors, with exclusions in writing — delivery, rigging, connection, commissioning, disposal, training.

Then add the money items: rent through construction and permitting, working capital, the ramp funding, and a contingency.

Two rules that save projects. Do not sign a lease before the capacity questions are answered, because the answers change what the space is worth. And fund the gap for materially longer than your plan assumes — a build that opens ahead of budget leaves you holding cash, while one that runs long with no reserve leaves you selling under pressure.

What Should You Not Do?

Four things, and each is a common way a viable project becomes an unviable one.

Do not sign a lease before the capacity answers are in. Water service, sewer basis and any capacity charge, gas supply and meter, electrical service. Any one of them can add a large number or rule the space out, and all are established by phone calls that cost nothing.

Do not budget from somebody else's project. Costs here are local — rates, fees, labour, and what the specific building already has. A figure from a build in another market is not a budget.

Do not fund the opening and forget the ramp. A new store earns customers one at a time while rent, utilities, insurance and loan payments run in full. That gap is the most common reason a well-built store fails, and it has to exist as cash before you open.

Do not skip the contingency. Not because something might go wrong, but because on a project with this many dependencies something will, and the question is only whether it is a problem or a crisis.

Summary

No single number answers this, because the site drives the cost more than the equipment does. Build the estimate line by line from real quotes, establish the utility position before signing anything, and fund the ramp as deliberately as the construction. Then compare the total against the median $250,000 an existing store sold for — with its customers, permits and provable revenue already in place.

The document a lender reads these numbers in is covered in writing a laundromat business plan.

The Next Step If You Are Looking to Buy

This page is general information about laundromat transactions, not legal, tax, or investment advice, and not a guarantee of sale price, timing, or financing approval. Verify current rules with your own CPA, attorney, lender, and the relevant state or municipal agency before acting.