Sure, your garage door is important, but almost just as important is how the real estate around your garage door looks. You can have the most beautiful garage door in the world, but if your garage itself, or your home exterior, is in poor condition, it won’t matter how the garage door looks. What can you do to make your garage exterior look better? Perhaps you need to invest in some quality garage door hardware.
A Primer on Garage Door Arches
Garage door exterior upgrades need to combined with home exterior upgrades. Do you want garage door arches? These need to be planned out and designed on a structural level. Perhaps you are considering buying or building a home with an arch above the garage door? Consider the implications. Arches may look good, but they could also cause damage to your garage door and its frame.
Consider that a garage door needs to have space for its panels to properly run on their tracks. Garage doors require 90-degree angles to ensure there is no scraping when the garage door lifts and lowers itself. The damage caused by a garage door scraping the frame can be significant, whether it through damaging the door itself or the frame of your home.
If you want your home to have the aesthetic feel of an arch, consider adding accents onto your garage door frame. Add these to the frame itself without compromising the functionality of your door or integrity of your frame. You can actually find brick arches and weather trim that can be installed on the exterior of your garage door wall.
Don’t Let Decorative Garage Door Hardware Get in the Way
Adding decorative garage door hardware may be just what your dreary old garage door needs. We will be the first to tell you when it does not need to be replaced. Sometimes an aesthetic change is just what your garage door needs. Have you considered accessorizing your garage door with fancy hardware? Do you ever find yourself wondering, “What does my garage door need?“
Garage doors contain design and construction elements that you can utilize as you give it a refresh. Whether it be cross rails, diagonal boards, multiple panels, windows or otherwise – all can be accented or minimized to your desires. When you consider adding hardware, just remember the ethos to “Keep it simple.” You do not want to overburden your home’s curb appeal with an over-accented garage door.
Also make sure your garage door remains “believable.” What does this mean? Well, you would not want to add barn door style elements to a non-barn door style garage door. The handles, ring pulls, and latches you use should match the design aesthetic of the garage door. And certainly you do not want to add hardware that will clash with the overall design aesthetic of your home’s exterior. Want to have a rockin’ home exterior? Don’t over-bejewel your garage door.
Consider Your Garage Door Hinges
Garage door hinges come in a variety of styles and gauges. They may seem like an innocuous part of the garage door, but they play an important role, from both a mechanical and a stylistic perspective. Hinges allow various sections of a garage door to connect and move with ease around the garage door track. They are a critical piece of garage door hardware.
Standard hinges are made from galvanized steel and come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and styles. There are several hinge manufacturers, but the design is fairly standardized. Each hinge plays a unique role in the overall functioning of the garage door. Hinges typically come in two popular sizes and gauge widths. The lower the number, the thicker the hinge. As an example, a homeowner would want to avoid a gauge size higher than 14 for a residential garage door.
Hinge numbers for residential garage doors typically range from one through five. It isn’t until you get into big, heavy commercial doors that you get into the higher hinge gauge range. Still, hinges installed on a garage door need to be a thicker gauge because they need to safely support the garage door’s weight. In the end, the style of the hinge may matter less, but it still should match the garage door.
Don’t Forget to Check the Trim
Guess what? Your garage door trim is a big part of your overall aesthetic. Garage door trim itself refers to decorative boards that can be added to your custom garage door design. Garage door trim goes a long way in enhancing your garage’s overall appeal. Trim also frames the doors, divides it into parts, and separates the window from the rest of the door’s face.
In most cases, you want to work with trim boards in pairs, though this can vary depending on the door’s style. As one example, if you go with a tri-fold door, you will often have three panels including a third trim board. Stile and rail doors have cross rails where the door sections break when it rolls up.
Fortunately, garage door trim comes in a wide variety of styles. The type of trim you use should accent your overall garage door aesthetic. Even better, you can accompany your trim with different decorative hardware, much like some of the things we have been talking about in this blog.
In the end, however, it doesn’t matter what hardware you use if your garage door is half falling off or has seen better days. Is it time to replace that worn out garage door so that you can accessorize a nice new one? If so, call Prestige Door today!