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by Rachel Lyon, Editorial Director for The House Designers®
With the ubiquity of classic panel garage doors, the slew of patterns available for traditional looks, and the relatively limited options made for modern homes in the past, it can be easy to miss just how many modern garage door styles there are these days. You’ll find plenty of striking and subdued designs to fit modern and contemporary architecture as well as the reimagined classics homebuyers have flocked to in recent years. Not sure how to choose with all this diversity? Here’s what to keep in mind as you shop for the perfect modern garage doors for your home!
Get Familiar with the Style
Garage doors for modern homes provide style differently. Rather than building a design with recessed or raised panels or with overlays on a base, they rely more heavily on the basic structure of the door. That means you’ll see a lot of windows in grids, flush planks and panels that provide a seamless look, and unique window patterns that go beyond the traditional top section lites. With highly varied forms, these doors can be described as everything from very simple to dramatic depending on the design!
Modern garage doors stand out in a couple of ways in particular. First, this is the only style that fills vertical space with windows—whether that means a whole-door grid or just a stack of windows up one side. This catches the eye differently than lites across the top, both in terms of breadth and balance. There are plenty of asymmetrical designs; they tend to strike a bold tone and can also offset other elements on the façade, allowing you to get more deliberate with the final look. Second, modern garage doors put focus on the horizontal—the panels create clear lines parallel to the ground and sometimes even include grooves or metal inlays for more definition. This is in contrast to traditional doors that include rails and stiles, which result in vertical symmetry. It’s a basic difference that has a huge effect on how people view the door.
Balance the Façade
When modern style aims to push the limits of design, it can come off as too much for residential tastes. Luckily, it’s easy to soften the look from the street with some variety! Use the garage door as an opportunity to add an element of interest to the façade—perhaps it could use a natural touch with a wood-look finish, or a bold paint color that pops against a plain exterior? Maybe a certain window style or pattern balances well with the windows present elsewhere? Modern garage doors are easily the most diverse category out there, which makes it possible to address the immense diversity of this architectural style. Use this to your advantage!
The garage door takes up a lot of visual real estate, so it has plenty of sway when it comes to curb appeal. Look at the overall design of different doors and their materials/finishes to see what draws you, and then test them out! The Door Imagination System from Clopay® is a helpful tool that allows you to build and try on different garage doors using a photo you upload yourself or one of the dozens of images they’ve made available. Have a house plan in mind? Go ahead and upload one of the pictures from our site!
Consider the Whole Picture
With the rise of the modern farmhouse, we’ve seen designers and customers modernizing other popular home styles—everything from chic European to streamlined Craftsman designs. And depending on the owner’s tastes and the neighborhood setting, many of these homes look fantastic with modern garage doors. More traditional door collections can also offer suitable solutions for modern architecture if you take a step back to see how different elements offset one another. As the styles mix, you’ll see eclectic schemes come together in surprisingly beautiful ways! Go into the door selection process with an open mind, and remember that modern homes have always been some of the most unique.
If you’re in the market for garage doors, Clopay® offers more than a dozen collections to explore, including multiple options for modern designs. They even give you a choice of material—steel, aluminum, real wood, or faux wood composite! Take a look through each collection to see which design options inspire you, and don’t be afraid to contact a local dealer to discuss the possibilities.