The next step in purchasing a new garage door is to determine the best style of door for your home. You will want to choose a style that blends with your home’s architecture.
Material of Door
Starting with the material, choose a material that will work best in your climate. Depending on your location, you will need to select metal, fiberglass, wood or aluminum for your door. Relatively inexpensive yet tough, steel garage doors are considered to be the standard on most new homes and come in a variety of styles from plain to elegant.
Type of Door
Depending on your lifestyle and the use of the door will determine which type you should invest in. They all basically boil down to two main types, the traditional style and the carriage style.
Traditional Raised Panel
Steel raised-panel garage doors are the most common garage doors in America. Sturdy and reliable, they have a timeless design with eight raised square panels usually and a deep wood grain texture; and they come in a variety of designs, colors, and window options. The traditional style is more economical and requires less maintenance than its counterpart, the carriage style.
Carriage Style
The carriage style is a more elegant style that is steel imprinted to resemble the old carriage house doors that would swing or slide open to let the owner’s carriage in or out. This style combines the elegant carriage house look with durable steel construction and overhead technology and usually has a deeper wood grain texture than the traditional styled door. It has the mechanics of a standard garage door, but it looks like it will open outward with faux hinges and hardware. Customize your design by choosing from a large selection of color, window style and decorative hardware options.
Color of Door
When deciding on the color of garage door that will best enhance the curb appeal of your home, you will want to select a color theme that includes the color of the window trim and exterior siding, whether it be brick, stucco, vinyl or wood. A nice color theme can really make a difference in how well your house stands out in the neighborhood and how it’s valued in the real estate market. Here are some things to keep in mind when choosing your colors. If your home is a neutral color, a white door and trim could give it a cleaner and brighter appearance, and if your home is white, adding some color could brighten it up. Either way, the idea is to create contrast, unless you want to tone the appearance of your home down by matching the color of the door to the color of your house. Garage doors come in a variety of colors and finishes with the most common colors being white, light or dark sand, stone, brown, charcoal, black, blue and green. With traditional-style doors, you normally will also have the option of wood-grain finishes, while on a contemporary style, the option could be anodized aluminum.
Windows or Solid?
Windows are a nice addition to the door’s design. They add another layer of design to the door; they let the sunlight into the garage, and they allow you to see out. You’ll want to keep in mind though that the light coming into the garage will bring additional heat with it as well, which can make it pretty hot in the garage during the summer. Windows will also allow heat to escape in the winter, making it colder on the inside than a garage with no windows in the door. Additionally, as you are able to look out, someone on the outside will be able to look in, unless you go with a design that doesn’t allow that. You can either have plain glass squares or you can decorate them with various decorative inserts that fit on top of the glass and can be painted to match the color of your garage door. Here are some of the different window insert designs from which to choose.
