Despite the decline, hastened by rising commercial rents and retiring laundromat owners, some entrepreneurs are toughing it out and redefining the laundromat landscape
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On a recent weekday, Margot Kaiser popped in to an east Vancouver laundromat, Canadian Coin Laundry located in a small strip mall on Main Street near King Edward Avenue, to pick up several bags of clothes that had been washed and folded.
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Even though her apartment in Kerrisdale has laundry facilities, Kaiser prefers getting her clothes cleaned off-site.
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“The landlords aren’t keeping up their machines, so either my stuff is getting wrecked or they’re breaking down mid-cycle,” she said.
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For years, she’d gone to another laundromat, Oaksville Laundromat on Oak Street and West 15th Avenue. But in May, the store notified customers its lease was ending and the business was closing.
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Kaiser was among the laundromat’s many stunned patrons — the place was “always busy,” she said — left to seek affordable laundry options elsewhere.
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The slow death of the laundromat in Vancouver is borne out by the data. In the last 10 years, the number of businesses that offer self-service laundry in the form of coin- or card-operated washers and dryers has decreased in Vancouver from 45 in 2016 to 27 in 2026, according to Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s urban studies program.
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The decline — hastened by rising commercial rents and retiring laundromat owners — particularly impacts residents who live in older rental buildings or basement suites that either don’t have laundry facilities or have ones that are poorly maintained or are too few in number.
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Some longtime laundromat operators and newer entrants into the industry are trying to attract new clientele, such as busy professionals and time-constrained families, by offering additional services, such as wash and fold, pick up and delivery, and dry cleaning. They can charge more for these services and keep up with their costs.
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But there are still many neighbourhoods in Vancouver with a dearth of affordable laundry services, Yan found.
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In Grandview-Woodland, for example, the number of businesses offering self-service laundry fell from eight to just two in the last decade, according to Yan. In the West End, it dropped from three to one. And Fairview lost all three of its options.
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On the other hand, Kensington-Cedar Cottage has the most with five businesses, while Hastings-Sunrise and Renfrew-Collingwood each have four.
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“The question is one of how do you stay clean? It’s not a problem for many of us, but it’s an issue as we lose these businesses,” said Yan.
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Katie James lives downtown and has laundry facilities in her apartment. But she popped into the East Van Laundry on Main Street and East 16th Avenue on a recent morning to clean a blanket that wouldn’t fit in her machine.
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While there are two laundromats downtown, James said it was a quicker to go here than to go to the other side of downtown.
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“I was thinking there are surely more than that, but there wasn’t. I’ve got laundry (facilities), but if I didn’t, I would be in more of a panic.”
