How long do major appliances last?

Working averages: refrigerators and ranges 13 to 15 years, gas ranges longer; washers and dryers 10 to 13; dishwashers 9 to 10; microwaves 8 to 10; disposals 10 to 12, with usage and maintenance moving every number.

What is the 50-percent rule for appliance repair?

If a repair costs more than half the price of a comparable new unit, and the appliance is past half its expected life, replacement usually wins. Either condition alone is a lean; both together is the answer.

Which appliance repairs are worth making?

The cheap peripherals on machines with life left: gaskets, hoses, belts, switches, fans, defrost parts, pumps, and igniters. The retirement notices are sealed-system and motor-core failures: compressors, drum bearings, control-board cascades on aging units.

Do new appliances really save enough energy to matter?

For refrigerators, decisively: units from a couple of decades back can use two to three times a modern equivalent's electricity, real money yearly. For most other appliances the efficiency delta is more modest and the decision stays mechanical.

Appliance Lifespans: Repair or Replace

Page last reviewed: August 2026 · Reviewed by Harold R. Bennett, retired home inspector

Every failing appliance asks the same question, and answering it well takes three numbers: the machine’s age, its kind’s realistic lifespan, and the repair’s price against a replacement’s. The appliance lifespan repair or replace decision then runs on a few honest rules, plus the pattern knowledge of which repairs are routine and which parts are retirement notices. This reference supplies the table, the rules, and the patterns.

The lifespan table, honestly

Field averages, with maintenance and usage moving every figure: refrigerators 13 to 15 years (the coil-cleaning habit being the number’s biggest lever); gas ranges 15-plus, electric 13 to 15; water heaters, tank 8 to 12 and tankless roughly double, per their own reference; clothes washers 10 to 12, dryers 12 to 13 (the vent’s condition writing both the dryer’s life and its safety); dishwashers 9 to 10; microwaves 8 to 10; disposals 10 to 12; HVAC equipment on its own longer clocks in its own category. Two honest footnotes travel with the table: feature-dense modern machines trade lifespan and repair simplicity for capability, boards and sensors failing where levers once lived, and the averages are medians, not warranties, with a maintained machine on the happy side and a neglected one paying early.

The rules

The 50-percent rule: a repair over half the cost of a comparable new unit argues for replacement; the half-life test adds age: past half the expected lifespan, the bar for big repairs rises, since the next failure is statistically enroute. Both together, an old machine facing a big repair, is the answer; neither, a young machine facing a cheap part, is the other answer; and the split cases weigh the modifiers: repeat offenders (the second major repair in two years is a pattern, not luck), parts availability (orphaned brands and long backorders vote), the failure’s nature (below), and the efficiency delta, which for refrigerators specifically is real money, decades-old units drawing multiples of a modern equivalent’s electricity, while for most other appliances the energy math politely defers to the mechanical one. The quiet fourth number is risk: an aging water heater or supply-hose situation carries flood exposure that a young replacement retires, which belongs in the arithmetic even though no invoice shows it.

Repairs worth making, and retirement notices

The pattern knowledge sorts most calls before a technician arrives. Worth making, almost always: the peripherals, door gaskets and switches, drain pumps, fill valves, belts and idlers, igniters and thermal fuses, defrost heaters and thermostats, fan motors, and hoses, cheap parts on machines with calendar left, many of them tutorial-grade DIY with the breaker off. Retirement notices, usually: the cores, refrigerator and AC compressors (sealed-system labor pricing against whole new units), washer drum bearings and spiders (a teardown job on a worn machine), dryer drum and motor failures on old units, magnetron-plus-board failures in microwaves (where replacement is nearly reflexive), and control-board cascades on aging electronics-heavy machines, one board today rehearsing the next. The gray middle, a single board on a mid-life machine, a pump on a nine-year dishwasher, is where the 50-percent and half-life rules earn their keep, and where a diagnosis fee from an honest technician (many credit it toward the repair) is cheap decision insurance.

Buying the replacement like it matters

When replacement wins, the lifespan table shops with you: repair-history reputations by brand and line (the consumer-testing publications’ reliability surveys being the rare data worth the subscription), feature restraint as a longevity strategy (every added solenoid is a future failure), standard sizes over built-in exotics, and the installation details this category keeps repeating, braided hoses, punched knockouts, connectors never reused, vents in rigid metal, and a leak sensor on the floor under anything that holds water. Delivery day is also the maintenance program’s birthday: the coil, filter, trap, and vent rituals this category catalogs are what move the new machine to the happy side of the table it was bought from.

The bottom line

Know the machine’s age against its table, price the repair against half of new, and let the part’s identity break ties: gaskets, pumps, and igniters are repairs; compressors, bearings, and board cascades are retirement letters. Replace the fleet’s flood risks on your schedule rather than theirs, buy simple over clever, and start the new machine’s maintenance rituals the week it arrives, because the table is not fate, it is a record of who cleaned the coils.