Hotel Laundry Cost in Los Angeles: In-House vs Outsourced

Most hotel managers know what their linen cost to buy. Far fewer know what it costs to wash. In Los Angeles that number moved this year. On July 1, 2026, the city’s hotel worker minimum wage went to $25 an hour, plus a $4.25 health benefit payment, at hotels with 60 or more rooms (City of LA Office of Wage Standards). The person running your washers is part of that.

This post does the math the rest of the internet skips. It prices a real in-house laundry for two LA hotels, shows which numbers are cited and which are assumptions, and ends with a worksheet for your own property. If you’d rather skip to how outside service works, see hotel linen and towel laundry in Los Angeles.

What does hotel laundry really cost in Los Angeles?

Cost per pound is the total monthly cost of washing, drying and folding your linen, divided by the pounds you wash that month. It’s the one number that lets you compare doing it yourself with paying someone else.

Most hotels never calculate it. The laundry room shows up on the books in pieces. Wages land in housekeeping. Water lands in utilities. The dryer repair lands in maintenance. Nobody adds them up.

Here is what goes into the number:

• Labor: the hours someone spends loading, unloading, folding and carting. This is the biggest piece by far.
• Water and sewer: every pound of linen takes a few gallons to wash.
• Energy: gas for the dryers and power for the washers.
• Chemicals: detergent, bleach, softener.
• Machines: repairs, and saving up to replace them.
• Space: the room your laundry sits in could be storage, an office or, in some hotels, a guest room.
• Linen loss: stains, tears and towels that walk out in a guest’s bag.

You can’t price all seven from public numbers. But the two biggest, labor and water, are public in LA. That’s where this post starts.

How did LA’s hotel wage change the math in 2026?

Who you pay depends on how many rooms you have. The city has two wage floors, and they are far apart.

Your hotel	Minimum pay from July 1, 2026	Source
Under 60 rooms, City of LA	$18.42 an hour (city minimum wage)	City of LA minimum wage notice
60 or more rooms, City of LA	$25.00 an hour, plus $4.25 an hour health benefit	Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance
50 or more rooms in the airport zone near LAX	Same as the row above	Hotel Worker Minimum Wage Ordinance

The $4.25 is paid as extra wages when a hotel doesn’t provide qualifying health coverage. If you do provide coverage, you pay for the plan instead, so the cost is there either way. The ordinance also sets more raises in the years ahead.

For a hotel over the line, a laundry hour now costs at least $29.25 before payroll taxes. That’s 59% more than the $18.42 a smaller hotel down the street pays.

You’ll find plenty of hotels on both sides of that line, from Downtown near the Convention Center to Koreatown, Hollywood, Westwood near UCLA and the hotels along Century Blvd by LAX.

What does 520 pounds a day cost a 70-room LA hotel?

Take a 70-room hotel in the City of LA at 75% occupancy. That’s about 52 occupied rooms a night. It’s over 60 rooms, so the hotel wage applies.

How much linen does a room make? A 2017 benchmark from a laundry design firm found anywhere from 8 to 55 pounds per occupied room (Western State Design). This example uses 10 pounds, near the low end, for a hotel without a spa or pool towels. The same source puts a worker’s output at 45 to over 200 pounds an hour. This example uses 75.

Line	Number	Cited or assumed
Linen per night	52 rooms × 10 lb = 520 lb	Assumed, inside the cited 8–55 lb range
Linen per month	15,600 lb	Math
Labor hours	520 lb ÷ 75 lb an hour ≈ 7 hours a day, 208 a month	Assumed, inside the cited 45–200 range
Hourly cost	$25 + $4.25 = $29.25	Cited (City of LA)
Labor	208 × $29.25 = $6,084	Math
Payroll taxes and workers’ comp	about 10% more, $608	Assumed
Water	2.5 gallons a pound = 39,000 gallons = 52 HCF × $10.529 = $549	Rate cited (LADWP Schedule C); gallons assumed
Labor and water	about $7,241 a month
Per pound	about 46 cents
Per occupied room night	about $4.64

The water rate is LADWP’s commercial Tier 1 rate for July to December 2026. An HCF is 748 gallons. Sewer is billed on top of that and isn’t in this table.

Read that 46 cents as a floor, not the total. Gas, chemicals, repairs, machines and floor space all come on top.

What about a 40-room boutique hotel?

Now take a 40-room boutique hotel at the same 75% occupancy. That’s 30 occupied rooms a night. It’s under 60 rooms, so the city minimum wage applies, not the hotel wage.

Line	40-room hotel	70-room hotel
Occupied rooms a night	30	52
Linen per month	9,000 lb	15,600 lb
Labor hours a month	120	208
Hourly cost	$18.42	$29.25
Labor plus 10% taxes	$2,431	$6,692
Water (LADWP Tier 1)	$317	$549
Labor and water a month	$2,748	$7,241
Per pound	about 31 cents	about 46 cents

On paper the small hotel looks cheap. In practice, 120 hours a month is about 4 hours a day. Few people want a 4-hour shift. So the laundry gets done by a housekeeper between rooms, or by the night desk. That works until a full Saturday, when rooms and laundry need the same person at the same time.

For a small hotel, the real cost of in-house laundry is often time, not money. Count what happens on your busiest day, not your average one.

What costs don’t show up on the laundry line?

The tables above leave out every cost that’s hard to see. These are the ones that catch hotels off guard:

• Gas and electric. Commercial dryers usually run on gas, and they run for hours every day.
• Sewer. LA bills sewer on top of water, based on how much water you use.
• Chemicals. Detergent, bleach and softener, bought by the drum.
• Repairs. A commercial washer down for three days means sheets on a truck to somewhere else anyway.
• Replacing machines. Washers and dryers wear out. Setting money aside each month is a real cost, even if no bill arrives.
• Floor space. Your laundry room has a rent, even if you own the building. In a hotel tight on space, it’s a room that could earn money.
• Linen wear. Rough handling, wrong temperatures and overloaded dryers shorten the life of sheets and towels.
• Turnover and training. When the person who knows the machines quits, the next one learns on your linen.

None of these is huge alone. Together they’re why the true cost of an in-house laundry is well above the labor and water floor.

Do you need more linen if you outsource?

Yes, and it’s the cost outside laundry services rarely mention. Par is the number of full linen sets you own for each bed. One set is on the bed, one is clean on the shelf, one is in the wash.

A hotel with its own laundry often runs 2.5 to 3 par. A hotel that sends laundry out often needs 4 to 5 par, because some sets are always in transit (Hotel News Now, 2019).

For a 70-room hotel, going from 3 par to 4 par means buying one more full set of sheets, pillowcases and towels for every bed. It’s a one-time purchase, not a monthly one. Price it before you switch, and spread it over the life of the linen when you compare.

A fast, reliable turnaround keeps that number down. When laundry comes back the next day, you need fewer sets on the shelf than when it comes back in a week.

Hotel laundry cost in Los Angeles: in-house vs outsourced, side by side

	In-house laundry	Outsourced laundry service
Labor	Your staff, at $18.42 or $29.25+ an hour in the City of LA	Included in the service price
Water, sewer, gas	On your utility bills	Included
Machines and repairs	You buy, fix and replace them	None
Floor space	A room of your building	Freed up
Linen needed	About 2.5–3 par	About 4–5 par
Turnaround	Same day, if staff and machines are free	Set by the schedule you agree on
Busy weekends	Your team does more with the same machines	The service handles the extra volume
Control	Full	Shared, so pick a partner you can call
Cost you can predict	Hard, costs are spread across budgets	One invoice

There’s no single right answer. The table is a way to find yours.

When should an LA hotel keep laundry in-house?

Outsourcing isn’t always the better call. Keep it in-house if most of these are true:

• You’re under 60 rooms, paying the city minimum wage, with a laundry attendant who has slack time.
• Your machines are newer and paid off.
• The laundry room has no better use.
• You need linen back within hours, many times a day, such as a spa with constant robe and towel turns.
• You run a large property with a full laundry plant and a team that runs it well.

Outsourcing usually wins when you’re over 60 rooms and paying the hotel wage, when your machines are near the end of their life, when the laundry room could become something better, or when your busy weekends keep running you short.

Many hotels land in the middle. They keep a small washer for spills and same-day emergencies and send out the bulk of sheets and towels.

How do you work out your own hotel laundry cost?

Do this over one normal week. It takes about an hour of your time in total.

1. Weigh the laundry. Put a scale by the laundry room door. Weigh every load for seven days.
2. Count the hours. Ask whoever does laundry to log their start and stop times on laundry only.
3. Multiply hours by your real hourly cost. Use your wage, plus the health benefit if it applies, plus payroll taxes.
4. Add utilities. Check your LADWP and gas bills. If the laundry isn’t metered separately, estimate its share.
5. Add chemicals and repairs. Use last year’s totals, divided by 52.
6. Divide by the pounds. That’s your cost per pound.

Bring that number, your weekly pounds and your busiest day to any laundry service quote. It’s the only fair way to compare.

How does WonderWash handle hotel laundry in Los Angeles?

WonderWash is a commercial laundry and laundry pickup and delivery service in Los Angeles. For hotels, motels and vacation rentals, it picks up sheets, towels, duvet covers, robes, pool towels and staff uniforms on your schedule: daily, a few times a week, or when you call.

Linen comes back within 24 or 48 hours, folded, hung or pressed the way your rooms need it. Larger orders on a tight turnaround may carry an extra fee. Pricing is a custom quote based on how often and how much, with a 20 lb minimum per pickup, invoiced on a schedule that works for you.

A few honest limits. WonderWash washes the linen you own. It doesn’t rent sheets or towels. It isn’t a dry cleaner, so there’s no starch pressing.

WonderWash also runs two neighborhood laundromats in Los Angeles, WonderWash Pico Blvd in Mid-City and Lucy's Laundry Mart in Boyle Heights, with washers up to 80 pounds. The team speaks English and Spanish.

See how it works on the hotel linen and towel laundry page, or read about commercial laundry service in Los Angeles for other kinds of businesses. If your hotel has a restaurant, the restaurant and catering linen service covers tablecloths, napkins and chef coats too.

Should your LA hotel outsource its laundry?

Start with the number. If you’re over 60 rooms and your labor and water look like the 46 cents in the example above, outside service deserves a real quote. If you’re a small hotel with spare staff time and paid-off machines, in-house may still be your best deal.

Either way, do the one-week count first. Then ask for a hotel laundry quote or call or text (323) 417-2255. Tell WonderWash your weekly pounds and how often you need pickups, and you’ll usually get a schedule and a price the same day.

Frequently asked questions

How much does hotel laundry cost per pound in Los Angeles?

For a 40- to 70-room hotel doing its own laundry, labor and water alone come to about 31 to 46 cents a pound in 2026, using the assumptions in this post. The full cost is higher once you add gas for the dryers, chemicals, repairs, machine replacement and the floor space the laundry room takes up.

What is the minimum wage for hotel laundry workers in Los Angeles?

Since July 1, 2026, hotels in the City of Los Angeles with 60 or more guest rooms (50 or more in the airport zone near LAX) must pay at least $25 an hour, plus a $4.25 an hour health benefit payment when they don't provide qualifying health coverage. Smaller hotels follow the city minimum wage of $18.42 an hour.

How many pounds of laundry does a hotel room produce?

A 2017 industry benchmark put the range at 8 to 55 pounds per occupied room per night. Limited-service hotels sit near the low end. Resorts with pools, spas and robes run much higher. Weigh one week of your own laundry to get your real number.

Do you need more linen if you outsource hotel laundry?

Usually, yes. Hotels with their own laundry often run 2.5 to 3 sets of linen per bed, while outsourced hotels often keep 4 to 5, because some sets are always out being washed. That extra linen is a one-time cost to count before you switch.

How fast does WonderWash return hotel laundry?

Within 24 or 48 hours, on a pickup schedule set around your occupancy: daily, a few times a week, or on demand.

How much does WonderWash charge for hotel laundry?

Hotel laundry is a custom quote based on how often WonderWash picks up and how much each pickup weighs. The minimum is 20 lb per pickup. Call or text (323) 417-2255, or use the quote form, and you usually hear back the same day.

Does WonderWash rent hotel linens?

No. WonderWash washes, dries and folds the linens you already own. It doesn't supply or rent sheets or towels, and it isn't a dry cleaner, so there is no starch pressing.

Do you work with Airbnb and vacation rental hosts in Los Angeles?

Yes. WonderWash picks up sheets and towels from Airbnb and vacation rental hosts as well as hotels and motels, on the schedule your turnovers need.

Related services

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