One of the first culture shocks when renting a flat in Switzerland isn’t the rent, or the security deposit, or the three-page inventory. It’s discovering that you don’t have a washing machine. Or rather, that the washing machine is in the basement, and you can use it on Tuesdays from 8am to 12pm. Not on Wednesdays. Not on Sundays. Tuesdays, from 8am to 12pm. And if you’ve missed your slot, you’ll have to wait until next week.
The communal laundry room is a standard feature in Swiss residential buildings. In roughly half of cases, usage times are allocated: each tenant is assigned a fixed slot, usually half a day per week. In the other half, access is unrestricted within the permitted hours, which in most buildings are from Monday to Saturday between 7 am and 9 pm. Use on public holidays is prohibited, unless the building regulations state otherwise. In any case, the minimum right recognised is to be able to do laundry at least once every fortnight.
As for the cost, 80% of tenants pay directly per wash, at an average of 1.55 francs per wash at 40 degrees. Some buildings use token systems, others use cards, and others include the cost in the service charges at the end of the year. What the landlord cannot do is charge twice for the same thing: either you include it in the service charges, or you charge it via the meter, but not both.
In Spain, this is virtually unheard of as a housing model. The washing machine is part of the flat, part of the furnishings, part of life. Not here: the laundry room is a shared space with its own rules, and those rules are set by the landlord or the property manager, not by law. If there are scheduling conflicts with a neighbour, the starting point is those rules, not the Civil Code. It’s worth reading them before someone leaves you a note in your letterbox.