Abstract: This paper presents a new procedure for designing the rotor and the stator of a universal motor for home appliances that is based on a genetic algorithm (GA). The GA was employed in order to optimize the independent geometric parameters of the rotor/stator lamination with the aim to reduce the main motor's power losses, i.e. the losses occurring in the iron and the copper. Using this procedure the motor's technical quality, expressed as efficiency (i.e. the ratio of the motor's output power to its input power), can be significantly improved. The GA proved to be a simple and efficient search-and-optimization method for solving this day-to-day design problem in industry. It significantly outperformed a conventional 'direct' design procedure that had been used before.