Today I want to talk a little bit about common garage door sizes. So a lot of people ask me what is a standard size garage door, or when I’m working with builders they ask what is a standard size they should frame the garage door for so they don’t have to spend a lot of money getting something custom. A standard garage door is 8’ x 7’. Most doors you see that are single car doors, are going to be 8 feet wide. So we measure garage doors width first and then height. Then the standard height is seven feet tall. That’s going to be our most common. And then from there you see some variations in height. So seven foot tall is the standard but you’ll see doors in three inch increments. We make different heights by mixing and matching different sections. So you’ll see 6’ high, 6’3”, 6’6”, 6’9” and of course 7’.
From there, after 8×7, I would say 9×7 would be your next most popular of common garage door sizes, especially the single doors, obviously, which is going to be nine feet wide, a little bit wider then the eight, and becoming more popular, especially with cars getting bigger. You don’t have to worry about your side mirrors as much with a little bit more room. 9×7, I would say slowly replacing eight by seven as the most popular. If you have the room and multiple doors, how many can you fit in the garage and still have enough room in between the doors for tracks hardware and everything that goes on the sides that we need to install for the door to operate properly.
After 9×7 the most popular size then would get into your double door, a 16 foot wide door. That’s going to be your two car wide single garage door, but wide enough for two cars 16 feet wide is the most popular by a 7 foot tall.
From there you might see some different heights. So eight by seven being the standard nine by seven getting more and more popular. And also we’re starting to see a lot of nine by eight.
So nine feet wide, eight feet tall. That would be great. If you have a bigger work truck with a ladder rack that you want to get in the garage, usually you need an eight foot tall door for that to fit.
I’m actually doing a lot of 18 foot wide doors. So just like the nine footer is starting to be preferred to the eight wide. 18 foot is getting more and more popular just because of a little bit more room a little bit wider. A lot of people do find it difficult to fit two cars side by side in a 16 foot wide door whereas if you have an extra foot on each side in the 18 it can become easier.
Then you start getting to some odd sizes. So like I said, 8 foot wide is a standard width. You don’t see less than eight foot very often because then you’re going to have difficulty parking a car in there. You do see a little 7’6” or 7 foot. Builders do something funky because they use the garage as an afterthought and they just didn’t frame it up to a standard size. They just went with what they had to work with.
Below eight foot, you’re going to have some trouble as far as styles, what’s available when you go look at doors either online or when you’re driving. You’re going to see an eight foot wide door. When they have to shrink it down even more you’ll lose a panel. As far as raised panel being four panels across, typically, you know, below a foot, they might drop down to a three panel. Some of the long panel options won’t be offered. A lot of manufacturers are not doing doors less than eight feet or won’t put any glass in something smaller than eight feet. So if you’re looking to put a row windows in the door, you might not be able to do that depending on what size and what you end up with.
And then going the other way, anything above eight feet, they consider common garage door sizes at the one foot mark. So 8 foot, 9, 10, 12, 14, some 15. And then your standard, which is going to be 16 in your double door. Then they’ll do variations on that but it ends up getting a little bit more expensive because they’re going to take if you have an 8’6” wide door, usually what they’ll do is they’ll take a nine foot wide door and then lop off three inches on each side and get you the 8’6”.
You’re paying for a bigger door that then has to be cut down even smaller to fit the odd size opening but usually within two inch increments they’ll make those for you. But like I said, it’s a little bit more money and then you start getting to some issues of what’s it actually going to look like if I take a 14 foot wide door, but then I need to bring it down to 13’6”. How’s the stamping is going to work out? What’s it going to look like? Is it going to look like the door I wanted? A lot of people will see a door that looks great in a nine by seven but, have an odd size. We will get a drawing made and come to find that to make their size work it no longer look like the door they originally wanted.
Main reason I go over all this is if you’re working with a builder, and thinking about changing your garage up a little bit. That way you have a good idea of what a common size is. So when it comes time to pick out a door, you can pick a door that you want. You can pick out a design and you know what it’s going to look like and it’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg to have a door custom made to a weird size that’s just not very common.