Garage-Door Grand Slams --- How to nail the remodeling move that yields the highest return on investment -- and the biggest boost of your house's curb appeal

 

"Nahyun Arnal was not happy about her garage door. "I just wanted to drive through it." After the DIY influencer remodeled the exterior of her split-level ranch in Winnipeg, Manitoba, its new charcoal-hued siding and picture windows lent it a midcentury-modern moxy. But the old garage door, which looked like stacked white-chocolate bars, trapped the facade squarely in 1960s-subdivision limbo. "I totally cropped it out of photos until we had it redone," said Arnal, whose accounts are called Our Hideaway Home.

Homeowners are most likely to replace garage doors if they're selling the home in the next two years, according to a 2022 report from the National Association of the Remodeling Industry and National Association of Realtors. No wonder, given a return on investment of 194%, the highest of any home improvement, according to the 2024 Cost vs. Value Report from industry tracker Zonda. Why do others wait? Though Arnal wound up choosing a top-of-the-line model that manufacturer Clopay sells for $23,000 (Arnal routinely gets discounts that suppliers offer to influencers), the national average for a garage door replacement is only $4,513, Zonda reports. "When you have that much square footage facing the street, it's an easy upgrade for visual impact," said architect Karen Lantz, founder of Lantz Full Circle, in Santa Barbara, Calif.

To modernize her sister's 1950s ranch-style home in Houston, Lantz swapped the white, stamped-aluminum garage door for a geometric grid of aluminum and glass. The style jibes with the home's updated details and with the garage-door trend for right angles. Fan windows, popular during what Lantz refers to as the Holly Hobbie era, date a home.

Also on the wane: attention-hogging white as the reflexive garage-door color choice. While many people believe that white recedes, Michael Patrick Porter, an architect in Santa Barbara, Calif., said, "I think white stands out." He camouflaged a Newport Beach home's garage with the same soft green color as its siding.

In general, the simpler a door's design is, the more contemporary it looks. New incarnations of carriage-house doors dispense with fussy X braces. Clopay's fastest-growing product, according to a representative, doesn't even have windows: just horizontal steel planks with a wood-grain design, which chime with many home styles.

To help you choose a design, many manufacturers' sites offer tools that let you virtually try out styles, features and finishes on your home. Be sure to consider your architecture. "A horizontal stainless steel garage door on a Colonial Revival home doesn't make it modern, [just] architecturally confused," said Ken Pursley, co-founder and partner at Pursley Dixon Architecture in Charlotte, N.C.

A garage door's aesthetic role is a supporting one, underlines Pursley. When the door's done right, it "enhances the home without trying to steal the show."" [1]

1. OFF DUTY --- Design & Decorating: Garage-Door Grand Slams --- How to nail the remodeling move that yields the highest return on investment -- and the biggest boost of your house's curb appeal. Yelena Moroz Alpert.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 11 Jan 2025: D9.