When Is the Best Time to Buy a Washer and Dryer?

The month-by-month pattern

Laundry appliances follow the same late-summer model-year changeover as most major appliances: new lines arrive in the fall, and retailers discount the outgoing models to clear floor space. That makes September and October the core of the good-value window, and it stacks with Labor Day at the start of the stretch and Black Friday/Cyber Monday at the end of it, extending the practical buying window through November and into December as end-of-year clearance continues.

Memorial Day in late May is the other reliable spike outside that fall run — a smaller version of the same discount-outgoing-inventory logic, timed to a holiday weekend rather than the model-year calendar.

Why spring is the weak stretch

March, April, and June show up repeatedly as the priciest months, since they sit furthest from both the fall changeover and the Memorial Day weekend, with no major sale event of their own to offset that.

If you need a washer or dryer outside the sale windows

• Ask about open-box or floor-model units — retailers often want these gone regardless of the season.
• Check whether buying the washer and dryer as a matched pair unlocks a bundle discount independent of timing.
• Shop the last few days of any month, when many stores are pushing to hit a sales target.

How much to trust this pattern

Not every source agrees on the details here — a few lower-authority buying guides claim laundry appliances get a spring model refresh instead of a fall one, which would flip this calendar. The more established sources (Reader's Digest, Consumer Reports' own reporting, appliance retailers themselves) consistently describe the fall changeover instead, which is what this page follows, but it's worth naming the disagreement rather than pretending the picture is unanimous.

Either way, a specific washer or dryer's price depends on more than the month: a model being discontinued can go on sale any time of year, and a genuinely new release can hold full price straight through a major sale weekend. Use September through December as the default window to start shopping, and compare the actual price against that model's history before assuming a sale tag is the best it will get.

Related guides

Doing more than one kitchen or laundry-room appliance at once? Refrigerators share the Memorial Day and Black Friday windows, and dishwashers follow an almost identical fall calendar.