How the Front Loader became so dominant in Europe
There is a lot of nonsense being spouted on this forum to be quite honest about how Europeans came to fall in love with the front loader.
When washing machines first arrived in Europe in the early 1900s, they were predominantly top-loaders as that design was a simple adaptation of a previously popular hand-operated dolly washing machine i.e. it was just a motorised wash-tub.
Umpteen other designs of top loader with everything from Hoover's 'Active Water' side-mounted tumbling action, various pulsators, central agitators, water jets etc were used. However, all of these machines were only semi-automatic and required quite a lot of manual intervention to complete the wash.
Automatic top loaders did arrive in the market, and indeed were briefly popular in some places. However, they never the dominant design of machine here.
After WWII, there was a major shift in design in Europe which was inspired largely by the Bauhaus movement i.e. modernism. The one are of life this really impacted upon was kitchens and laundry rooms. The birth of the modular European kitchen, where appliances fit in beneath a countertop was basically the death of the front loader.
Housewives in the 1950s and 60s marveled at having a nice washer, and possibly dryer, sitting side by side neatly mounted under a countertop and integrated into their kitchen or, laundry room.
By the 1970s, the front loader was the absolute dominant design and it just became 'the washing machine'. Top loaders were considered obsolete technology and there was no particular demand for them, so manufactures dropped them.
These front-loading machines were always branded as 'automatics' while top-loaders were considered to be 'non-automatic' / old fashioned.
European front loaders, weren't particularly water-efficient until the 1980s when an ecological drive began, largely pushed by marketing departments of appliance manufacturers, not by Government intervention.
During the 1980s we start to see various eco-valves, eco-balls, scoop paddle systems and of course, Zanussi's infamous Jet System, which is now used across most of the European Electrolux/AEG machines.
Suddenly ecological washing machines became 'cool'. It wasn't necessarily anything about cost-savings as water in many markets here isn't actually metered!
The introduction of the letter rating systems in the early 1990s, which measure energy consumption, wash performance and spin performance and rank machines A to G also pushed the manufacturers into innovating to save energy and water.
When shopping for a washing machine here, most people will look for AAA rating and they will also expect to know the RPM of the spin cycle. The higher the better!
This, rather than some kind of draconian legislation has driven the market towards more efficient machines with ultra-fast spins.
Also, from the 1970s onwards detergents rapidly moved towards being 'Automatic' detergents. Hence, you saw Persil Automatic, Omo Automatic, Ariel Automatic, Bold Automatic, Daz Automatic, Surf Automatic etc.
Automatic detergents, are simply optimised to work in a front loader i.e. they're the same as the 'HE' designation in the USA and Canada.
By the late 1970s most detergents were 'automatic' and most supermarkets only stocked a handful of 'traditional' high-foaming products aimed at the rapidly-decreasing number of twin-tub users and people who wanted to handwash delicates.
By the 1980s and into the early 90s, the 'automatic' designation was dropped from most packaging, and it was just assumed that all detergents were suitable for washing in a front loader, unless stated otherwise.
This is kind of the transition the North American market is making now.
Top-loading machines, but with a H-Axis drum, did become popular in a few markets in Europe, particularly France for some reason. They're not widely available though and tend to be restricted to a rather narrow range of models. Even in France, they seem to be slipping out of popularity.
One other factor in Europe is there's a 'set and forget' culture when it comes to laundry.
People put the washing machine on and forget about it. E.g. it's quite common to put your laundry on before you go to work in the morning, or if you've got night rate electricity and a quiet machine, it's often done over night. Many machines have a delay-start option specifically to avail of this option.
Hence, the longer cycles on front loaders are generally not worried about by most people.
For things you need really quickly, that aren't too heavily soiled, the vast majority of machines have a QuickWash option which can typically do a wash in about 15 to 30 mins. It does an adequate job for very lightly soiled items that just need 'freshening up'. However, they're not great for food stains etc.
Also with regard to wash temperature, I would like to shoot another myth down.
We don't wash most of our clothes very hot at all.
The vast majority of washes here are done at 40C (104F). The only exceptions to that tend to be towels and bed linen, which some people prefer to wash at 60 or 90C to ensure they're sanitised. It's also not a bad idea to give your washing machine a chance to clear itself out with a 90C wash once in a while. E.g. I throw about 15-20 white towels into my washing machine once every so often with a large scoop of persil + an extra dose of Vanish OxyAction Crystal (oxygen bleach) and wash at 90C. It keeps the towels gleaming white and it also keeps the machine in tip-top condition.
Also, with regard to the very high spin speeds. The majority of the parts of Europe where people live, have much milder climates than most of North America and there is a much stronger tradition of line-drying. That, coupled with the higher cost of energy here (due to heavy environmental charges) means that there is a much bigger demand for washing machines that spin clothes to a very high level where they can be either line dried or, dried quickly in a tumble dryer without significant cost.
Anyway, I hope this perhaps clears up some of the 'facts' about European vs North American laundry habits.
