How long do household appliances actually last?

Manufacturers rarely tell you how long an appliance is meant to last. Retailers have no reason to. So most people find out the hard way, usually on a Sunday, usually with a floor full of water.

Below are realistic working lifespans based on typical domestic use. Treat them as a planning tool, not a promise: a washing machine run twice a week in a soft-water area will comfortably outlive one run daily in a hard-water one.

Typical lifespans

Appliance	Typical life	What usually kills it
Fridge / freezer	10–15 years	Compressor failure, door seal fatigue
Washing machine	8–11 years	Bearings, drum spider corrosion
Tumble dryer	10–13 years	Heating element, blocked airflow
Dishwasher	9–12 years	Pump, limescale, leaking door seal
Oven / cooker	13–17 years	Element, thermostat, door hinges
Microwave	7–9 years	Magnetron
Espresso machine	5–10 years	Limescale, pump, group seals
Gas boiler	12–15 years	Heat exchanger, missed servicing
Laptop	5–8 years	Battery, thermal wear, software support ending
Television	7–10 years	Backlight, power board
Vacuum cleaner	6–9 years	Motor, neglected filters
Bicycle (frame)	15+ years	Rarely the frame — it is the drivetrain

Three things that actually change the number

1. Water hardness

Limescale is the single biggest killer of anything that heats water: dishwashers, washing machines, kettles, espresso machines, boilers. In a hard-water area, descaling on schedule can add years. Skipping it can halve the life of a coffee machine.

2. Airflow and filters

Dryers, vacuums, fridges and laptops all fail early for the same reason: something that needs to breathe stopped breathing. A blocked condenser or a clogged filter makes the motor work harder every single cycle.

3. Whether anyone ever serviced it

Boilers are the obvious case — an unserviced boiler is both shorter-lived and, in many countries, outside its warranty terms. But the same logic applies to anything with a service interval printed in the manual you no longer have.

Repair or replace?

A useful rule of thumb: if the repair costs more than half the price of a comparable new unit, and the appliance is past two-thirds of its typical lifespan, replacing is usually the better call. Below that, repair.

Two things make that decision much easier, and most people have neither to hand:

• The purchase date. Without it you are guessing at where the appliance sits in its lifespan — and at whether it is still under warranty.
• The exact model. Repair costs and known faults vary enormously between models from the same brand.

When the lifespan matters most

The point of knowing these numbers is not trivia. It is that a fridge at year 13 and a fridge at year 3 deserve completely different decisions when they start making a noise — and that a machine three months outside a two-year warranty is a very different conversation with the manufacturer than one three months inside it.

Owned keeps the purchase date, model number, manual and service history for everything you own, so when something starts failing you already know how old it is, what it is, and whether you can still claim.