Do you need a base for the washing machine?

never again without... but we have a washing machine and dryer side by side, so the pedestal was allowed to be nice and high

My grandma is 86 and also doesn't have one.

Your grandma also didn't spend half her life (in front of the PC or TV)

Needed in the sense of "can't do without" ... of course not. But you also don't need a dishwasher or a dryer. Because you could get by without them.

Right, nobody needs a dryer. We hang our laundry outside in summer and winter (or indoors occasionally with good ventilation). It's purely an electricity guzzler and not exactly gentle on the material either. On the other hand, a dishwasher usually saves water and cleans better than by hand. It's also a luxury, but like with a solar system, the benefit for people and nature is given. I don't see that with a pedestal for the washing machine.

We hang our laundry outside both summer and winter

But unfortunately not an option for pollen allergy.

What else are such low bases built for if, from our point of view, they are not needed?

The base is a comfort feature. We don’t miss it – we had it in the terraced house and have now planned without it.

The question was whether one needs a base. In my opinion, no. My grandma is 86 and doesn’t have one either.

I share that opinion. The "reasoning" is funny.

It’s purely an energy guzzler and is also not exactly gentle on the material. A dishwasher, on the other hand, usually saves water and cleans better than by hand.

A dishwasher is unsuitable for many pans and pots, dishes, glassware and cutlery. That’s why we don’t have one – which of course does not mean that "one" or someone else does not need, want, or consider it indispensable.

A position 20cm higher really doesn’t help much, I would say.

I would consider whether the dryer really needs to be stacked on top, since a pedestal at least knee-high seems more sensible to me. I notice 20 cm less bending down now in my early 50s, not painful yet, but in 2050 "we will know more."

A good friend built a house with door frames one meter wide, wisely anticipating that a wheelchair might someday need to pass through... And he is now 37. So yes, you can definitely overdo it.

Whether it’s nobler in the mind to get tennis elbow from decades of handling overly wide interior doors, I don’t necessarily have to clarify empirically. Homeownership is not meant to mean never moving again. Nearing retirement, not building new again would seem to me a wasted life experience or a sin of unused wisdom.