20 Unique Garage Door Ideas
The garage door is such an important part of your property’s exterior design, and yet it so often gets overlooked. If you want to avoid letting down your property’s carefully crafted and expertly curated aesthetic with a substandard door, take a look at our list of the 20 best garage door ideas, and take some serious inspiration.
Our list is designed to be as diverse and as thought-provoking as possible, mixing ultra-contemporary designs with timeless retro classics. This provides you with a broad palette of options to choose from as you go in search of your property’s perfect garage door.
Read on and get all the inspiration you need. Don’t forget to get in touch with our team if you have any questions or if you need any advice on which style is the best option for your home.
Spanish Hacienda Style
In sunnier climes, a Spanish hacienda, mission, or farmhouse-style home provides the perfect complement to the surrounding environment. When it comes to achieving this, the garage door is a critical component to the overall aesthetic.
Think gate style doors with ornate, rustic handles; soft, warm wooden tones, and Iberian-style arches. These design touches are enhanced with the addition of other features, like stylized, rustic hinges which create the right finish to your garage doors and really complete the look.
Frosted Panels
If your garage is a working space rather than simply a functional storage area, you will want to consider natural lighting. This can be accomplished with translucent panels built into the garage door itself. As well as giving your space the extra lighting you need to get tasks done, a lattice of translucent panels creates a uniquely modern effect for your door.
Consider frosted acrylic — strong enough to provide security, non-transparent for additional privacy, and yet designed in a way that accepts natural light from outside.
Modern Fiberglass
There are two basic routes to go down when deciding on a garage door. One is a retro, rustic feel, while the other utilizes more modern materials and design flourishes. Within these two camps, there are a world of different options available to homeowners.
One such option in the modernist camp is fiberglass. This is a tough and versatile material that can be used to create sharp and sleek twenty-first century finishes for your property. What’s more, it is remarkably easy to clean and maintain, even in the toughest of conditions.
Stable Doors
The garage is fundamentally a modern evolution of the historic horse stable structure. Both are designed to house means of transportation and working tools, and both are major design features on any property. You can stay in touch with this tradition by incorporating a stable door style garage into the aesthetic of your home.
This means wood or wood-effect materials, stained and finished with a clear coat which enables the natural flaws and grains in the wood to shine on through. This can be complemented with similarly finished hanging baskets and window shutters to achieve a cohesive and stylish look.
Olde Worlde Country Style
As well as the traditional stable door effect, there are many other garage door ideas that can create a rustic, timeless statement at your property. For an olde worlde country style reminiscent of the farmhouses of the French, German, and English countryside, consider replacing the clear finish mentioned above with neutral earth tones such as beige, browns, or pale greens. If you have stone elements on your property, these can be highlighted with stone-effect cladding on your garage door.
In terms of structure, a diagonal wooden beam extending between the top and bottom corners of the garage door increases security and stability, looking great at the same time.
Aluminum Notes
Aluminum has been a staple of the construction and manufacturing industry for many decades now, and it continues to create uniquely modern looks whenever it is used. The benefits of aluminum include ease of maintenance and cleaning, a sleek futuristic aesthetic, and lower installation costs when compared to other door materials.
Combining aluminum features with the frosted panels discussed above is a useful way to create a space age overall look for your property, while also connecting you with all of the stylistic and functional benefits of both design features.
Asymmetric Patterning
There was a time when symmetry was everything in design, and the creation of finely balanced, comprehensive exteriors was prized above all else. Modern designers, however, are stepping away from this and creating exciting and interesting garage door ideas with asymmetry at their heart.
One idea for this is to create a lattice effect with panels, each decorated either in its own unique way, or with a themed and yet asymmetric pattern. If handled correctly, this creates a tastefully striking effect for your garage door, and it can be used to set off other design elements on your property exterior.
Secure Glass Paneling
We have already discussed natural lighting, and this is a feature which is undoubtedly important to anyone who wishes to use their garage as something more than a mere storage space. However, security and privacy still need to be considered.
One the most effective garage door ideas in achieving both of these aims is to install a top row of glass panels above a solid garage door. These panels will provide lighting and yet will prevent anyone outside from looking into your space. Modern reinforced glass provides an extra level of security without compromising on functional lighting or exterior style.
Vinyl Insulation
While many of the garage door ideas covered here are style-driven, others have been developed with practicality and function in mind. Incorporating vinyl insulation into the garage door sits very much in the latter category, and it could save you considerable dollars in energy costs over the course of the year.
Many garage doors will already have a layer of insulation sandwiched between the exterior and interior panels. However, it doesn’t hurt to enhance the effectiveness of this insulation and increase your savings over time. Adding a vinyl covering to the rear of the garage door will achieve this in an unintrusive way that does not infringe on the door’s more stylish elements.
Natural Pine
Scandinavian influence can be found everywhere in interior and exterior design circle, thanks in part to its cool, stylish aesthetic and to its supreme functionality. We only need to look to the success of homeware chain IKEA in the United States to understand how popular and broadly influential Nordic interiors have become.
So, how can you achieve the same effect with your exterior garage door? One method is to use natural pine, or pine-effect synthetic substances, as a building material. The neutral style of the pine makes it easy to complement a broad variety of different design elements across the exterior of your property, and bridges the gap between rustic retro qualities and the sleek minimalism of modern exterior fashions.
Warm Cedar
Those who consider natural pine or pine-effect finishes to be a little on the cold side shouldn’t turn their noses up at wood altogether. This diverse and age-old building material has proved itself to be versatile and highly practical time and time again, creating charming finishes for both interior and exterior projects.
Cedar is a prime example of a building material that combines the stylish advantages of pine with a warm, comforting, and homely effect. Mock-cedar synthetic panels can also be used to achieve a similar effect at a far lower cost.
Smooth and Sleek
We touched upon minimalism early when we discussed a natural pine finish for your garage door. However, this is only scratching the surface. Many modern designers are taking minimalism to extremes, with pieces that are as stark as they are striking.
If this approach takes your fancy, consider featureless metal panels, adorned only with the handles and hinges necessary to make the door functional. This kind of supreme smoothness and sleekness may be a little “next level” for some tastes, but if a futuristic effect is what you are going for, this is something to seriously bear in mind.
Curved Lines
On most modern properties, the garage door is a wide, rectangular shape, marked out into the side of the property with straight lines that join one another at right angles. Of course, this does not always need to be the case, and, sometimes, a little bit of subversion of accepted “norms” goes a long way.
An arched curve along the upper side of your garage door’s opening is a simple but effective means of stepping away from the traditional in favor of something a little different. Without jeopardizing the function of the door, a curved ceiling line can make a world of difference to the exterior look of your property.
Vertical Struts
Vertical struts marry additional structural support with an interesting stylistic finish. Rather than a traditional paneled structure, this garage door idea utilizes a single panel, reinforced with four or five vertical struts, placed equidistantly along its width.
While, in the past, these struts may have been masked with further paneling, increasing numbers of homeowners are choosing to strut their stuff with pride, and display these structural features as a design statement in their own right.
The Garage Door Mural
For property owners who want to do something a little different with their garage door and create a unique signature for their exterior, a garage door mural is a great idea. Take time to plan the design and the imagery you want to use, and then set about creating a piece of art that will set your property apart from the rest.
If you are not so artistically inclined, it might be worth hiring out a professional team to help you get the job done in the right way.
Venetian Hinges
Depending on how much space you have to play with both inside and outside of your garage, you may want to consider different opening mechanisms. A popular choice takes inspiration from Venetian blinds, opening right to left in an attractive concertina shape.
There are few practical benefits to this type of hinging and opening, but the stylistic effect means that its popularity is on the rise.
The Traditional Arbor
Most of the garage door ideas we have discussed have involved the door itself. This one, however, is a little different, and involves decoration of the frame above the door.
A traditional arbor installed above the garage door can create a pleasing finish, and can be used to hang plants, hanging baskets, or other ornaments around the door, setting off the look without impacting on the door’s function.
Contrasting Trims
Designers once shied away from color clashes, but not anymore. These days, contrasting colors are used to create unique statements and achieve striking effects within interior and exterior design projects — and garage doors are no exception.
Try contrasting the trim of your garage door with the door itself to create an arresting visual effect. If you are not feeling quite so adventurous, consider combining more muted tones for a slightly more toned down aesthetic.
Medieval Effects
Retro exteriors usually channel fashionable designs from the last few decades or even centuries. Some, however, go back even further, adopting medieval features to create exciting visuals. Deep woodstain finishes and stone cladding can achieve this with ease.
Many designers are opting to place wrought iron bars over window panels, intensifying the rustic, medieval effect. Such design elements also provide additional security and privacy for homeowners.
Contemporary Slide Up Designs
Roll-up garage doors have been a regular feature of homes and other properties for decades, but many property owners are put off by the prospect of an ugly and difficult-to-maintain mechanism on the inside of their garage.
More contemporary versions of the mechanism simply slide the paneled door up into the roof space of the garage, eliminating the need for an unattractive roll component and creating a far more sleek effect.
Want to learn more about the garage door ideas available to you? Want to connect with the best in the garage doors business? Get in touch with our team today.
