Grand Openings

Clopay

If you’re looking to replace your garage door, get ready to hear a new mantra from manufacturers and dealers: “The garage door is the new front door.” It’s clearly an attempt by the industry to make consumers place greater emphasis on the look of their garages and, consequently, get them to buy a more expensive door than what they might really need. But it’s also clear that the manufacturers of today’s garage doors have developed more attractive styles that really might enhance the curb appeal of your home.

You can get sectional garage doors in steel and wood that replicate the look of old-fashioned barn doors. These are known as carriage-house-style designs, and typically they cost at least 10 percent more than doors that have traditional panel designs. Manufacturers also are producing sectional doors made of composite materials, such as ground-up wood or plastic fibers. Composite doors can provide a less expensive and more durable alternative to wood doors, but they are still a niche part of a market that is dominated by sales of steel doors.

HOUSE OF STYLE. The garage-door industry and its manufacturers won’t share official sales figures, but experts we interviewed indicate steel doors account for at least 80 percent of all garage door sales. Although rising steel costs drove up the price of steel garage doors slightly in the past year, steel doors (which should last at least 20 years) are still the most affordable option. In fact, you can spend $300 or less to get a basic noninsulated door for a one-car garage. If you have an unattached garage that isn’t tied in with the look of your home, your best bet is to buy one of these single-layer stamped steel doors.

But we must admit that doors with carriage-house-style designs (both steel and wood) might provide a nice facelift to the front of your home compared with what traditional panel designs offer. After all, an attached garage can account for up to 40 percent of the area of the front of your house. Sectional doors with carriage-house-style designs were introduced in 2000, but sales in that category really took off after 2004, when the first steel carriage-style doors emerged. Today, about 11 percent of all garage doors sold are carriage-style designs. We expect that figure to grow, but it’s uncertain by how much. Nonetheless, there are things to consider before you dive into the carriage-house-style market.

Unfortunately, most sectional-garage-door dealers have little experience in selling carriage-house-style designs (less than 5 years for most). So, you can’t necessarily rely on those dealers to recommend the carriage-house-style panel design or decorative hardware that best matches your house. For example, designs made with a cross-panel frame (so-called cross bucks) might look great on a Colonial or farm house-style home but they can look out of place on a traditional ranch home. However, some manufacturers are training dealers to recognize which panel designs work best with certain houses, and some are even employing a computer software program that distributors and salespeople use to show homeowners how each carriage-house-style design looks on their garage. The service is free.

The truth is that sectional carriage-house-style doors are all about looks. From a manufacturer’s standpoint, they are the industry’s first product since stamped steel doors came on the market in the early 1980s that can be used to entice consumers into buying a new door. The garage-door industry also points to a National Association of Home Builders study that indicates replacing a garage door before listing a home can raise its sale price from 1 percent to 4 percent. In other words, if you put a $500 garage door on your $200,000 home, you could net at least a $1,500 profit. But choosing a carriage-style door might also entice you toward making other changes to the appearance of the front of your house (windows, shutters, entrance doors, new trim paint), which could easily double the cost.