A new door is one of the biggest visual changes you can make to the front of a house. Here are the decisions worth making before you look at catalogues.
For most houses the garage door is the single largest thing you see from the street — often more of the frontage than the front door and the windows put together. So it is worth a few minutes of thought before you start looking at pictures.
Start with the opening, not the door
Before anything else, the opening has to be measured properly: the width and height, the headroom above the opening, the backroom behind it, and the side room on each side. Those measurements decide which types of door and which hardware will physically work in your garage. We do this before anything is ordered, because a door that does not fit is not a problem you can fix later.
Material
Steel is what most doors are, and for good reason — it holds up well and it needs very little from you. Wood looks superb and asks for upkeep in return. Composite materials try to split the difference. There is no right answer here, only the trade-off between how it looks, how much attention it will want, and how exposed the door is to weather where it sits.
Insulation
Worth thinking about seriously if your garage is attached to the house, if there is a room above it, or if you actually use the space for anything other than parking. Texas summers make an uninsulated attached garage into a heat store that the rest of the house then has to deal with. If the garage is detached and it is purely for the car, it matters much less.
Windows and style
A row of windows across the top transforms how much light gets into a garage, and changes the look of the door completely. Carriage-house styling, raised panels, flush modern panels — this is the part that is genuinely down to taste and to what suits the house. Take a photo of your house from across the street and look at it that way; it is a better guide than a catalogue page.
The opener is a separate decision
A new door does not automatically mean a new opener, and an old opener does not automatically need replacing. But a heavier door can ask more of an opener than the one you have was built for, so it is worth having both looked at together rather than treating them as unrelated.
When you are ready, give us a call and we will come and measure the opening, walk you through what will work in your space, and quote the job.
