Is it time to replace your garage door but you have no idea what kind of garage door you should even be shopping around for? That’s a common occurrence when it’s time to switch out a garage door. In fact, many homeowners have no idea what size garage door they should be or if garage doors come in standard sizes. Now wouldn’t standard sizes for garage doors make shopping a lot easier? Luckily, at Pacific Experts Garage Doors, there are a few ways that we can group garage doors together to determine what standard sizes for garage doors are. Here are a few common garage door sizes and styles.
Standard Garage Door Styles
Apart from the standard dimensions for garage doors, there are a few standard sizes and styles for garage doors that can be used to meet residential and commercial requirements.
Residential Garage Doors – For standard home garages of 1, 2, and 3 car garages.
Large Garage Doors – Large garages for vehicles, trucks, and trailers with high clearance requirements.
Commercial Garage Doors – Large commercial garage doors for loading and unloading large trucks.
How to Measure Your Garage Door
You might be surprised to find that just because the garage door fits the opening for the garage, that it may not necessarily be the right fit for the garage that it is going on. Here’s how to measure your garage door to find the best fitting garage door.
Width and Height
When you measure your garage you want to take note of the height and width of the garage door opening. Generally speaking, for any residential garage door, the opening will be about 7 feet in height about 8 feet for every car like so:
- 1 car garage: 8’ x 7’
- 2 car garage: 16’ x 7’
The exception to this comes with new construction homes that offer 9’ wide by 7’ high.
Side Room
Additionally, you want to measure how much room there is from the opening to the walls of the garage. This is known as the side-room. This space lets you know how much room you have for the vertical track system, torsion springs, and other hardware. Generally, this space should allow for between 3 ¾ inches to 5 ½ inches on each side.
Depth of Garage
It’s important to measure the depth of your garage because this will determine if your garage door will fit properly when the garage opens. The ceiling of your garage will need enough space to accommodate the garage door opener, the ceiling tracks, and allow the garage door to fit correctly in both an open and closed position.
Headroom
The headroom of the garage door is measured from the top of the garage door opening to the ceiling. This space is going to need to amply fit the garage door tracks as well as the garage door opener. The standard size needed in the headspace to successfully install a new garage door is between 10 inches and 12 inches. Additionally, some garage door openers will require an additional 3 inches of room for proper installation.