Laundry worker
Laundry workers operate washing machines, steamers and dryers to clean items like clothes, bed linen, towels and uniforms.
What you'll do
Day-to-day tasks
As a laundry worker, you could:
- sort laundry according to fabric, colour and cleaning process
- tag items with bar codes or computer chips for identification
- treat heavily stained items before cleaning
- set machine controls, add cleaning agents and wash or steam laundry
- check quality before finishing items by drying, pressing and folding
- deal with customer payments, give cleaning advice and prepare laundry for deliveries
Working environment
You could work at a laundry, in a hotel, in an NHS or private hospital or at an adult care home.
Your working environment may be physically demanding, humid and hot.
Career path and progression
With experience you could become a laundry service supervisor or manager.
In a dry cleaning shop, you could be promoted to store manager. If your shop is part of a chain, you could take on responsibility for several shops in an area or region.
You could also start your own laundry business.
What it takes
Skills and knowledge
You'll need:
- customer service skills
- to be thorough and pay attention to detail
- the ability to work well with others
- to be flexible and open to change
- the ability to use your initiative
- excellent verbal communication skills
- the ability to organise your time and workload
- patience and the ability to remain calm in stressful situations
- to be able to carry out basic tasks on a computer or hand-held device
How to become
You can get into this job through:
- an apprenticeship
- applying directly
You could do a Commercial Laundry Operative Level 2 Intermediate Apprenticeship to get into this job.
This takes around 1 year to complete.
Entry requirements
You'll usually need:
- some GCSEs, usually including English and maths, or equivalent, for an intermediate apprenticeship
More Information
You can apply directly for jobs. Experience in dry-cleaning or commercial clothes pressing may give you an advantage, although many employers will train you on the job.
Customer care skills would also be useful, for example from working in retail or hospitality.
You can find out more about working in laundry and dry cleaning services from the Guild of Cleaners and Launderers.
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This page contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.