Whether you’re building a brand new home or embarking on some renovation work, if you have a double garage this will be a question that you eventually have to ask yourself: should you have two separate doors or one large door? To help you choose, our garage door installation experts have compiled a list of factors for you to consider. Once you’ve finished reading this guide, you should be in a much better position to make the right decision for your home and your family.
One Door or Two? Food for Thought From Our Garage Door Installation Team in Littleton
As garage door repair and installation specialists in Littleton, we have helped hundreds of homeowners in the Greater Denver area to find the perfect garage door solution for their properties and we look forward to helping many more in the future. To help even more people in other parts of the country and around the world, we put together short guides such as this one, with useful tips and information. In this guide, we have created a list of factors that we think you need to focus on when deciding whether to install a single or double garage door:
- Climate Control – If you use your garage purely as a storage area for your vehicles, this might not be a major consideration. However, if your garage doubles up as a home workshop or a rehearsal space for a band, climate control is something you should think about when choosing which type of door or doors to install. With one large door, you may find it difficult to maintain a comfortable temperature in your garage during the hottest and coldest months of the year. With two single doors, you can open just one of them when you enter and leave the garage, thereby limiting the amount of hot or cold air that you let inside.
- Maintenance Costs – Two smaller doors will almost certainly cost more to maintain than a single large one. With two doors, you will have two sets of tracks, two sets of torsion springs, two sets of extension springs and two garage door openers to worry about. With a single door, you will only have one set of torsion and extension springs, one set of tracks, and one door opener to maintain. If maintenance costs are a prime concern, one large door will be the best choice for your property.
- Initial Cost – When analyzing the initial purchase cost of one double door vs. two single doors, you are likely to find a much smaller difference than you might expect. Double doors are significantly more expensive to manufacture and cost proportionately more than single doors so whichever option you choose, you’re likely to end up spending a similar amount. For exact costs, we suggest that you search online for ‘garage door installers near me’ and request quotations for each option from two or three local companies.
- Breakdowns – As we mentioned above, if you decide to install two single doors, you will have two sets of each type of component to maintain. Whilst this will result in additional maintenance costs, you may find it more convenient in the event of major component failure. If, for example, one of your doors should break down and refuse to open, you will still be able to enter and exit your garage through the other door. However, if you only have one large door and it gets stuck, you will not be able to get inside your garage at all.
- Privacy – For street-facing garages, a large double door may pose privacy concerns. Every time you enter or exit your garage, the whole neighborhood will be able to see what you store inside. If you install two single doors instead, you will be able to maintain a degree of privacy that’s simply not possible with one double door. Whether this is a major consideration for you will depend on what you keep in your garage and whether it is easily visible from the street.
- Number of Vehicles You Own – If you only need to park one or two vehicles in your garage at any given time, you will not find one option more convenient than the other. However, if you wish to park three vehicles in your garage, one large door will be a better choice. With two single doors, you will find it much harder to maneuver three vehicles into position and to retrieve them from your garage when you want to go out.
- Aesthetics – During the course of our work as garage door repair and installation specialists, we tend to focus on practical considerations when helping clients to choose new garage doors in Littleton. Nevertheless, we do understand that appearances are important too and, with this in mind, we’d like to suggest that you take a drive around your local neighborhood and look at other properties with single and double garage doors to see which type you prefer from an aesthetic point of view. Some people feel that double garage doors draw too much attention to themselves while others really like their imposing appearance.
For a New Garage Door (or Two), Call Our Littleton Pros
If you live in Littleton or anywhere else in the Greater Denver Area, we’d be more than happy to help you choose a new door and install it for you. To discuss your needs with one of our friendly experts, call us now on (303) 730-0232.