Why a laundry bill looks nothing like the shop next door
Most high street businesses burn energy to keep the lights on while they sell something else. You sell heat. Hot water for the wash, hot air for the dry and steam for the press are the product, so the meter turns in proportion to the work going out of the door.
The scale of it is well documented. The Textile Services Association puts energy at around 10% of a commercial laundry's entire cost base. UK industrial laundries process roughly 743,651 tonnes of textiles a year using about 1,254 GWh, which works out at a benchmark of around 1.7 kWh for every kilogram that leaves the building, with the best operators pushing towards 1.0 kWh per kg. That is why a laundry with the same floor area as a clothes shop can pay five to ten times as much for its energy, and why a generic small business tariff, priced as if you were a retail unit, so rarely fits.
Here is where the load actually sits, with typical annual running costs:
- Commercial washer-extractors, a bank of 6 to 12: 8,000 to 35,000 kWh a year, roughly £2,000 to £8,750.
- Gas-heated tumble dryers: 25,000 to 120,000 kWh, roughly £1,750 to £8,400.
- Electric tumble dryers: 12,000 to 55,000 kWh, roughly £3,000 to £13,750.
- Steam boiler feeding presses and finishers: 20,000 to 90,000 kWh, roughly £1,400 to £6,300.
- Dry cleaning machine and solvent chiller: 6,000 to 22,000 kWh, roughly £1,500 to £5,500.
- Rotary ironer, hot water and extraction: 7,000 to 30,000 kWh, roughly £1,750 to £7,500.
The trading pattern stretches all of it. A steam boiler is brought up to pressure first thing and held there all day for the presses and finishers, firing through every quiet hour between garments. Washer-extractors heat wash water to 60 to 75C on every load. On a self-service site the dryer bank runs at full rate whether the drum is packed or half empty, and lighting and extraction carry on through long or unattended opening hours.
Key takeaways
- Drying is usually the single largest line on the bill, and on most launderette sites it is well over half of everything the building uses.
- Volume is what makes the contract rate matter. At 250,000 kWh, one penny on the unit rate is £2,500 a year.
- Deemed and out-of-contract rates are the most expensive a supplier offers, and laundries land on them more often than most trades after a lease change.
- You can normally agree a new contract up to 12 months ahead without touching your current one.
Typical usage and bills by type of laundry
These are the figures published across our laundry and dry cleaning sector pages, worked out at 25p per kWh for electricity, 7p per kWh for gas and around £365 a year in standing charges. Every row is typical and estimated, not a quote for your site.
| Type of business | Electricity a year | Gas a year | Typical annual bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ironing and collect-and-deliver service | 12,000 to 40,000 kWh | 4,000 to 24,000 kWh | £3,645 to £12,045 |
| Self-service launderette | 22,000 to 75,000 kWh | 6,000 to 90,000 kWh | £6,285 to £25,415 |
| High street dry cleaner | 18,000 to 70,000 kWh | 25,000 to 120,000 kWh | £6,615 to £26,265 |
| Hotel and care home linen laundry | 80,000 to 320,000 kWh | 120,000 to 450,000 kWh | £28,765 to £111,865 |
| Workwear, uniform and PPE laundry | 90,000 to 300,000 kWh | 140,000 to 450,000 kWh | £32,665 to £106,865 |
| Commercial and industrial laundry | 100,000 to 420,000 kWh | 150,000 to 600,000 kWh | £35,865 to £147,365 |
Taken as a whole the sector runs from about 16,000 to 200,000 kWh of electricity and 5,000 to 260,000 kWh of gas a year, with a typical bill of £15,000 to £45,000. The spread inside each row is mostly machine count, dryer fuel and hours. Gas dryers on long or 24-hour opening sit at the top of each band, electric dryers on standard shop hours at the bottom.
The four contract traps that cost laundries most
1. Out-of-contract and deemed rates
When a contract ends and nothing is signed, the supply drops onto out-of-contract or deemed rates, which are typically the most expensive rates a supplier offers. Laundries land there more often than most trades, usually after a lease change, a business sale or a renewal letter that arrived in the middle of a busy month.
Volume is what turns that into real money. A launderette getting through 45,000 kWh of electricity pays £450 more a year for every extra penny on the unit rate. A commercial laundry on 250,000 kWh pays £2,500 for that same penny, and another £3,500 if a penny goes on 350,000 kWh of gas. Nothing about your machines has changed. Only the rate has.
2. Rollover and the renewal window
Some contracts renew themselves unless you act inside a narrow window, often 30 to 60 days before the end date, and miss it and you are locked in again on terms nobody negotiated. Put your end date in the diary six months ahead. Business energy contracts can normally be agreed up to 12 months in advance, with the new rates taking effect only when the old one finishes, so you can lock a price now without breaking anything.
3. Standing charges and multi-meter sites
Standing charges of around £365 a year apply per supply and are payable whether the machines run or not. A dry cleaner with a gas boiler and an electric shop supply carries two of them, and an operator with a shop, a processing unit and a van base carries more. Check that every meter you pay for still feeds something you use, then get them all quoted together as one portfolio. Volume on a single contract usually buys a better unit rate than three separate small ones.
On-premises laundries have the opposite problem. Sitting on one site meter with the rest of a hotel or care home means the laundry load has never been priced on its own merits. Sub-meter it, even if the supply stays a single contract, so you can argue for a tariff shaped around what the laundry actually pulls.
4. Half-hourly capacity and availability charges
Larger laundries are usually on half-hourly metering, and that generally works in your favour because suppliers can price your real load shape instead of guessing it. The catch is the extra charges. Agreed capacity is often set years ago for plant that has since changed, and if you have not drawn near that limit in three years you are paying for headroom you never use. Review it alongside the unit rate, not instead of it.
Seven changes that actually move the meter
- Sub-meter the dryers for a month. Drying is typically the largest single line on a laundry bill and it responds fastest to a change in machine settings. You cannot cut what you have never measured separately.
- Enable moisture sensing, or shorten the default cycle. A fixed timer runs to the end whether the load is dry or not. Over-drying is pure waste and it shortens fabric life, and customers rarely notice a shorter cycle.
- Batch loads so the drums run full. A half-empty dryer uses close to the energy of a full one, and you cannot charge for the difference.
- Lag the steam side and time the boiler to real hours. Bare pipe, unlagged valves and condensate returns lose heat every hour the boiler is live. Firing from 6am out of habit for a counter that opens at 8 buys you two hours of standing loss every trading day. In a small shop this is often the cheapest saving available.
- Recover heat from what you already throw away. Wastewater and dryer exhaust are hot, continuous and already paid for, which is why heat recovery is the highest-return measure in most laundries.
- Drop wash temperature where the chemistry allows. Moving from an 85C process to a low-temperature 60 to 65C one saves in the region of 0.1 kWh per kilogram. On 300 tonnes of textiles a year that is about 30,000 kWh, or roughly £2,100 at 7p per kWh of gas. Sanitising and barrier cycles for care linen are a compliance requirement and stay hot, so apply this to towels, staff uniforms and non-clinical work.
- Dry cleaners: move suitable items to wet cleaning. A perc process runs at around 32 kWh per 100 lb of garments against roughly 12 kWh for wet cleaning, so it uses roughly a third of the energy where quality allows.
Whatever you change, track kWh per kilogram of dry textile as a monthly number. Above 1.7 there is headroom in the plant, and the figure tells you whether a change actually worked rather than leaving you to guess from a bill that moved for other reasons too.
When to switch, and how it works with us
Look six to twelve months before your contract ends, and look today if the end date has already passed, because every week on a deemed rate costs real money at laundry volumes. Agreeing early does not break your current contract, it fixes what happens the day it finishes.
Our service is free to you, because we are paid by the supplier rather than by you. Send one recent bill and we can see your MPAN or MPRN, your annual consumption, your unit rates, your standing charge and your contract end date, which is everything needed to price the market properly. Without a bill we work from machine count, dryer fuel, opening hours and postcode to give you an estimated range.
Switching changes nothing physical. Your meter, pipework, wiring and machines all stay exactly as they are, there is no engineer visit and no supply interruption, so no wash cycle is lost. Businesses that switch with us save 40% on average, typically 30 to 50%, and more if you're on out-of-contract or deemed rates. Our best single bill to date came down 72%. Those are estimates based on typical UK business energy spend and published market rates, and the 40% average is the business's own figure, not a published dataset, and you can see how we estimate.
If you want a number for your own site, you can get a free estimate for your laundry in a couple of minutes, or read the sector detail for a self-service launderette, a dry cleaner or a commercial and industrial laundry.
Common questions
How much does a launderette or dry cleaner spend on energy each year?
It depends almost entirely on how many machines run and how long they run for. A small self-service launderette or high street dry cleaner typically uses somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 kWh of electricity and 10,000 to 30,000 kWh of gas a year, which at about 25p per kWh for electricity and 7p for gas works out at roughly £6,000 to £26,000 a year including standing charges. A mid-size commercial laundry running 100,000 to 300,000 kWh of electricity and 150,000 to 400,000 kWh of gas is far higher, typically £36,000 to £100,000 plus. These are estimates, and the only way to know your real position is to look at a recent bill.
Can I switch supplier if I am still inside a contract?
Yes, and you usually should start early. Business energy contracts can normally be agreed up to 12 months ahead of your end date, with the new rates starting only when the old contract finishes. What you must avoid is doing nothing, because an expired contract drops onto out-of-contract or deemed rates, which are typically the most expensive rates a supplier offers.
Should my laundry be on a half-hourly meter?
Larger commercial laundries usually are, and it lets suppliers price your real load shape rather than guess it. The catch is that half-hourly supplies carry capacity and availability charges on top of the unit rate. If your agreed capacity was set years ago for machines you no longer run, you may be paying for headroom you never use. We check that alongside the rates when we look at your workwear or linen laundry supply.
All figures on this page are estimates from published UK benchmarks and are not quotes. See how we estimate.