How to start a laundry business in the Philippines

Step 1: Work out which of the three laundry businesses you are starting

Almost every confusing number you will read about this business comes from guides quoting one model's costs while you are planning another. There are three, and the capital between them differs by more than ten times.

• Drop-off shop, you do the work. Customers leave a bag, you wash, dry and fold it, they collect. Smallest space, fewest machines, lowest capital. This is where most Philippine laundry businesses actually start.
• Full-service shop with staff. The same thing at scale, with hired hands, more machines, often pick-up and delivery. More rent, more payroll, more throughput.
• Self-service laundromat. Customers operate the machines themselves. Your labour cost collapses and your equipment cost explodes, because you are buying an entire floor of commercial washers and dryers before you take a single peso.

Pick one before you price anything. A laundromat budget applied to a drop-off shop will scare you off a perfectly good business; a drop-off budget applied to a laundromat will strand you halfway through the fit-out.

Step 2: Budget the real startup cost

For a standard shop, published Philippine startup breakdowns land in this shape. Treat the top of each range as a city-centre location and the bottom as a provincial one.

Step 3: Register the business and secure permits

Get the paperwork moving early, because the fire and occupancy inspections gate your opening date.

• DTI registration for a sole proprietorship, or SEC for a partnership or corporation.
• Barangay Business Clearance for the specific address.
• Mayor's / Business Permit from your city or municipal hall.
• BIR registration for your Certificate of Registration, official receipts and books of accounts.
• Sanitary Permit from your local health office, plus health certificates for staff.
• Fire Safety Inspection Certificate and an Occupancy Permit for the space.
• Your Cedula and your contract of lease or proof of ownership.

Step 4: Know the sanitation rules that apply specifically to laundries

This is the part almost every laundry guide leaves out. A laundry is not just another shop that needs a sanitary permit. Public laundries have their own chapter in the Code on Sanitation of the Philippines — Presidential Decree 856, Chapter V — with implementing rules covering the sanitary permit itself, how the premises must be built and drained, how soiled and clean linen must be kept apart, and what happens to your wastewater.

Wastewater is the requirement that catches people out. The rules expect a laundry to run an approved treatment process rather than send wash water straight into a drain. Separately, under DENR Administrative Order 2016-08, establishments identified as needing a wastewater discharge permit must obtain one, and where no public sewerage system is available the shop is expected to install its own onsite treatment with effluent meeting DENR standards.

Whether that lands on a five-machine shop or only on larger operations depends on your volume and your location. Ask before you sign a lease, not after you have poured a slab: a space that cannot be drained compliantly is a space you cannot use.

Governing instruments: Presidential Decree No. 856, Code on Sanitation of the Philippines, Chapter V “Public Laundry” and its Implementing Rules and Regulations; DENR Administrative Order No. 2016-08. We were not able to verify individual section numbers against the primary text, so treat the summary above as a prompt to ask rather than a substitute for the regulation. Your City or Municipal Health Office and your regional DENR office are the authorities on what applies to your shop.

Step 5: Choose and size your machines

Equipment is the largest single line in your budget and the one worth slowing down on. Published Philippine ranges put commercial washing machines at roughly ₱55,500 to ₱102,500 and dryers at ₱22,000 to ₱88,750, with a top-load machine typically costing around half of a comparable front-load.

• Most small shops run up to about five washers with matching dryers, sized to the busiest day rather than the average one.
• Commercial machines are generally rated around 10 to 14 years, or roughly 5,000 cycles, so judge them on cost per cycle rather than sticker price.
• Dryers, not washers, are usually the bottleneck in the Philippines, particularly through the rainy season. Under-buying dryers is the most common sizing mistake.
• Check the electrical supply of the unit before you commit. Upgrading a service to run several commercial machines can cost more than a machine.

Equipment ranges compiled from published Philippine laundry business guides (2024–2025). Machine prices move with the exchange rate and the supplier, so quote your own before budgeting.

Step 6: Work out the monthly numbers before you commit

Running costs for a standard shop tend to fall in these bands:

One published worked example, at laundromat scale, puts monthly gross revenue near ₱120,000 against roughly ₱65,000 of costs — ₱15,000 rent, ₱13,000 wages, ₱2,000 maintenance, ₱10,000 detergent, ₱5,000 water and ₱20,000 electricity — leaving about ₱55,000 profit. On a ₱2.5 million laundromat build that is a payback of a little under four years.

Note which line is biggest. Electricity is usually the single largest variable cost in a Philippine laundry and the one that quietly decides whether the shop works. Model it at your own rate per kWh before you trust anyone's profit figure, including this one.

Worked example from a published Philippine laundry business guide, last updated June 2024, at self-service laundromat scale. Figures are illustrative, not a forecast, and a drop-off shop's numbers look nothing like these. Build your own model with your actual rent and electricity rate.

Step 7: Run the day-to-day without a notebook

A laundry runs on knowing whose bag is whose. That is easy for the first ten customers and unmanageable by the fiftieth, and the failure mode is expensive: a lost load costs you the item, the customer and the review. What you actually need to track is small but relentless.

• A claim stub on every drop-off, so a bag is never identified by memory.
• A status you can move as the load goes from washing to drying to folding to ready for pickup.
• Who has paid, who has not, and by what, cash, GCash, Maya or bank transfer.
• A customer record by phone number, so a regular's history is one search away.
• Today's orders, pending pickups and revenue on one screen at closing time.

Frequently asked questions