How to choose the right garage door color for your home
Most garage doors tend to be white, especially on newer homes. Its easier & cheaper for builders to slap in a white garage door. White is the most popular color for a garage door. White garage doors can look amazing. They’re clean and fresh. BUT is a white garage door the best color for YOUR home? Does it showcase your home in the best way to make your home look stunning? After all, who doesn’t want to have the best looking home on the street.
Should garage doors match the front door, the trim color, or the predominant color of your house. What happens if you have a front loading garage door and it unwittingly becomes the focal point of your home. Now what do you do?
What are the rules when it comes to choosing the correct paint color for garage doors?
There are many factors to take into consideration when choosing the right garage door color for your house. Pick the right color and your house will look coordinated and stunning. Pick the wrong color, and the house will always feel off.
When choosing your garage door color, you need to take into consideration, all the color of your exterior’s fixed elements like the color of your brick, stone or siding. The roof and window trim color also play a factor as they could compete with the garage door if any of those colors are off.
You should also consider how prominent your garage door is inconjunction with the rest of the house. Does the garage blend in with the house or does it stick out front which can make it a negative focal point if you pick the wrong color?
There are many factors to take into consideration when choosing the right garage door color for your house. You need to consider the colors of the home’s fixed exterior elements, like the predominant color of your brick, stone or siding, and your trim & window color. The location of the garage also plays a factor in which color you choose.
Should my garage door match the color of my house?
The general rule is to select a garage door the same color as the dominant color of your home. A garage door the same color as your house will make the home look bigger and allow people to notice other aspects of your home. The garage door blends into the house exterior making the home the focal point that it should be. Not your garage door.
Should my garage door be the same color as my front door?
In some situations, having your garage door matching your front looks great. Wood front doors and a matching garage door makes a home look rich and stunning. Similarly, a black front door & garage door looks equally stunning when executed properly. This home above, looks stunning as all of the house exterior’s colors are coordinating in the beige/taupe/brown shades.
On the other hand, however, if your garage door is a vibrant color like blue, pink, red, green etc, matching your garage door to your front door just looks bad. The short answer is, in some cases it looks great. But in the majority of cases, the front it should not. In our picture right, the garage door should pick up one of the lighter colors of the brick to blend in. And the front door? The homeowners definitely picked the wrong color for this red/orange brick as well.
Matching your front door + garage door can look amazing but it needs to be a well thought out look to pull the look off successfully. There needs to be an overall design plan when choosing your exterior house colors.
White Garage Doors
White is the most popular color choice for garage doors but it doesn’t mean its necessarily the right color for YOUR home. You will see white garage doors in alot of new homes because its easier & less expensive for builders to slap in white garage doors regardless if they’re the best color for the house.
In order for white to be the best choice for the garage, it needs to be repeated elsewhere on the house’s exterior, and not just the gutter or eavestrough spouts. The challenge with my client’s white door in the picture above was twofold. Firstly the white doors stuck out because white was not repeated elsewhere on the exterior. There was no white repeated in the stone, brick or pillars. Secondly, the garage doors are very prominent and unwittingly became a focal point of the exterior. Thirdly, the exterior had alot of different color combinations of cool + warm colors, red, beige, and charcoal gray. Color combinations that you would not normally put together in a design.
Front-loading Garage Door Colors
Front loading garage doors are challenging to choose a color because they unwittingly become the focal point of your home. You never want your garage door to be the focal point of your home. You want it to work together in harmony to create an overall look that will wow your neighbors!
When you have a front-loading garage door, the garage door sticks out, pun intended and becomes a focal point. How you treat this focal point can make or break whether your house looks stunning, or looks weird and off.
The homeowner on the right choose a popular but traditional white garage door. Not only is the garage door prominent because it is sits ahead of the rest of the house, there are 3 garage units here therefore spanning a good portion of the front exterior. The white doors look fresh and clean here, and complements the white trim of the exterior. We can’t see the front door, but a matching white front door would complete this look perfectly. Or the homeowner could have a blue front door to pop the front and the home would still look stunning.
Matching your garage door color with your shutters
Matching your garage door color with your shutters, could provide a coordinated look and elegant look depending on what color your shutters are and depending how all the colors of the other fixed elements going on. In our picture to the right, this is a very charming cohesive look where matching the shutters and to the garage door adds to the exterior’s interest. The gray siding is a great color choice to complement the black accent colors already chosen, and the charcoal gray roof is perfect complement that fits between the mid-gray siding and the black shutters & garage door. The deep red door is the cherry on top to a well executed color scheme for this exterior.
Garage doors that match the shutters work when the shutters are in a neutral color tones, like gray, black, greiges, beiges or white. When shutters are a color, like blue, green, or red that you would find in the south, you don’t want to match your garage door to the shutters as this would look hideous. I can’t think of a softer word than hideous here. lol.
If you’re matching your garage door to your shutters, it works best when the shutters are in neutral color tones like gray, greiges, beiges, black or white. Don’t match your garage door to a shutter color like blue, green or red etc. This will make your house look hideous.
Best colors to paint garage doors
Top 5 Most Popular Color Choices for Garage Doors
Related Curb Appeal Posts:
How to Pick the Best Roof Color for your House
5 Easy Front Yard Landscaping Ideas for Great Curb Appeal
How to Pick the Right Trim Color for your House
I help busy homeowners, just like you, to style their house to make it a stunning retreat, where they can live and enjoy their home. I help homeowners, make money beyond their wildest expectations from the sale of their house by guiding them when they’re getting their house to sell.
Choosing a garage door? Need help?
Does your garage door stand out in a negative way? Perhaps you bought the house with the existing color but its always bugged you. You want to change it but not sure of the right color. Or maybe you have a front loading prominent looking garage door and you realize that you have the wrong color for your exterior. Whatever the reason, you want a color expert’s opinion to give you guidance. I can help you with that in this Garage Door Paint Color Package.
Check out my Front Door, and Front Door + Garage Door Color Consults here.
Hi! I’m Debi Collinson. Designer & Real Estate Investor.
From a young age I grew up looking at blue prints, going on construction sites and offering my opinion on color selections. My father, a Professional Engineer, and co-owner of a Design|Build|Engineering firm, gave me an early view and interest into the field of designing, building and decorating. I wanted to become either an Architect or an Interior Designer and to join my father’s firm but my mother thought that the renovation/building industry was no place for a woman. LOL. So I took business instead and pursued a career in the corporate world. But in 2006, at the request of a realtor, I nervously staged my very first home but the sellers liked their newly styled home so much that they turned down an offer for full asking price. I went back to design school and the rest is history.
In my spare time, LOL, I buy “fixer uppers” to fix up & either sell for a healthy profit or to rent. I’m currently living in my 8th “fixer upper.” Sign up to receive my e-mails of how to make your home stunning, how to sell your house for top dollar AND how to become financially independent one fixer upper at a time!
