Though it may be dented from too many errant slapshots or misjudged parking jobs, the garage door is the face of your home, one which you can update, modernize and personalize with a garage door style that compliments your home’s aesthetic.
The earliest American garage doors emerged at the start of the twentieth century with “float over” doors, creaky hinges and weak screws. In the ‘20s, Detroit entrepreneur invented the “upward-lifting” garage door, the forerunner to the garage door styles that both accent and protect our homes today. Blending utility with décor, form with function, the garage door styles of the twenty-first century revolutionizes the model of its 100-year-old predecessors.
Your home is so much more than a house, and a garage door style that matches our family’s way of life helps make it so.
Top Garage Style Trends
Bold, Contrasting Colors
There is subtlety in boldness, and by contrasting your garage door with the rest of your home, your family projects an air of both welcome and strength.
Most homes feature a light-colored paintjob that will reflect every season and endure many years. Splash your garage door with a bold color to contrast your home’s light exterior, such as bright red or dark green, or, most popular among contemporary garage door styles, black or charcoal gray. A black garage door evokes a modern twist on industrial innovation, especially a sleek or glossy black, and pairs with most home colors. Charcoal gray complements stone elements of the exterior while juxtaposing white features such as columns or trim.
If the exterior of your home is painted with a darker brush, garage doors with light-colored panels such as light yellow or sky blue shine light onto your home that cannot be ignored. Bold, contrasting colors are among the simplest yet most noticeable garage door style trends to leverage as you redesign your home.
Garage Energy Efficiency
Though you may not paint your garage door green, you can still go green in other ways, as is becoming a popular garage door style for many American homeowners.
One of the leading trends in homecare is overall sustainability, which maximizes your energy efficiency and saves your family money. Ensuring your garage door properly manages climate control is one of the best ways to combat draining your home’s energy and your wallet. Be sure to have a correctly insulated garage door, which is measured by its R-Value. According to the Department of Energy, R-Value relates to the capacity of an insulating material to resist heat flow — the higher the R-value, the greater the insulating power. Detached garages with insulated walls should have an R-Value of 10 or higher, but those without insulated walls or in areas that don’t get too cold too often can get away with an R-Value of as low as six. In most cases, your home will have an attached garage, for which you want an R-Value of 12 or higher, most importantly so if there are rooms above the garage.
Energy efficiency is one trend garage door styles that will always be in fashion.
Smart Garage Technology
From the kitchen to the bathroom, connectivity and smart technology lead as the most in-demand trends in the home, and the same goes for garage door styles.
For decades, the greatest technology associated with the garage door has been the remote-controlled opener, revolutionized only by programming it to your car. In 2018, however, smart technology has allowed for the proliferation of even further smart technology and home automation for your garage door, including features such as sensors that detect when a car approaches as well as smartphone-controlled openers. Companies such as LiftMaster offer the capability to wirelessly sync your garage door to your smart phone so that you will receive real-time alerts if your garage door opens or closes, scheduling capabilities to preset times for the garage door to open or close, and remote access to control your garage door wherever you are.
With the rise in technology, even more smart functions will become the norm as garage door styles evolve to meet your family’s 21st century needs.
Utility
Homeowners must no longer sacrifices form for function as they design their ideal living spaces, and new garage door styles permit chic design while maximizing utility.
Formerly, when garage doors were bulky, ugly and obtrusive, most homeowners would balk at the prospect of installing one any larger than necessary. With such updates in garage door style trends as tasteful accent wood and carriage house overlays, bigger is now better in both form and function. As a general rule of thumb, you want a new garage door to be the size of the vehicles you may have in five years rather than the one you have now. A single sports car may quickly be replaced by two SUVs as your transportation changes according to your family’s way of life, and you don’t want to outgrow your garage door if you can help it.
There are even further functionalities to fix to your garage door that provides both additional functionality and fashion, as well as catering to your family’s unique lifestyle. Whether you use your garage as a workshop or a recreational area, or simply the storage of your vehicles, the addition of windows to your garage door provides a bit of natural light to provide the same breath of fresh air that windows do for inside the home. Our Carriage House doors blend a timeless fashion with sleek functionality as they include personalized window selections ranging from 4-Piece Arched Madison to 2-2 Piece Arched Stockton and more.
Satisfying your family’s wants and needs will forever be the greatest trend in home design, but new garage door styles finally allow you to fulfil those demands easily, affordably and exquisitely.
Wood & Steel
Just as organic food is in vogue for the groceries, an organic aesthetic is a rising trend in garage door styles.
Though virtually all garage doors will be built with a polyurethane core, we ensure ours are completely free of the anthropogenic compound, chlorofluorocarbon (CFC). Additionally, each of the AR-BE garage doors feature striking, natural accents of wood and steel appearances that make a previously unattractive garage door one of the most beautiful parts of your home.
Accent planks are available in cedar, mahogany, dark oak and light oak to craft the perfect look for your home décor. Carriage House Overlays include one set of spade decorative hardware, as well as optional Barcelona or Wrought Iron designs to replicate an old-world look. Raised Panel garage doors feature designer glass options including Hawthorne, Somerset, Newport, Hampton, Temple and Florence.
Everyone envisions their dream home differently, but few consider the garage door as a priority in that fantasy. With the range of garage door style trends that abound in today’s market, you may find that your perfect garage door is the first step in crafting your perfect home.