Garage doors and front doors are the two most dominant features of your home’s exterior. Garage doors can comprise as much as a third of your home’s facade, meaning that it’s often the first feature people notice about your home. Garage doors are also an excellent opportunity to express your personality and creativity and is one of the first things to consider when trying to enhance your home’s curb appeal. Front doors also grab the attention of passers-by, particularly when the walkways leading to them are made to draw in visitors. Together, these two fixtures take up a large portion of the front exterior of your home, so it is essential that they look stylish and coordinated.
You can achieve this using a variety of decorative tricks, but one of the easiest and most effective ways is by matching your garage and entry doors in terms of their materials, style and color. This can boost the curb appeal of an otherwise ordinary-looking home and make it stand out in your neighborhood.
If you’re short on ideas or not sure how to begin, this guide can help — it’s full of tips and tricks for coordinating your entry and garage doors.
General Guidelines to Matching Colors With the Exterior of a Home
We’ll start by sharing some general tips and ideas for coordinating your doors:
1. Choose the Same Style for Both Doors
The simplest way to boost curb appeal with matching front and garage doors is to pick a single style and color for both. This will give your home a unified appearance, making it more comforting and inviting. There are several customizable features for both front and garage doors, which include door material, color selection, window style and decorative hardware style. Matching all these features can give your home a particularly distinct, customized appearance.
2. Find a Style That Complements Your Surroundings
When considering a style for your front and garage doors, consider window styles, colors and hardware that go well with the overall style of your house or neighborhood. You don’t want to pick a color that clashes with the style of your home. For example, a bright coral color might work in Miami, and bold colors tend to look great on country-style houses, but they would likely look out of place on a Colonial- or Victorian-style home.
If you have plans to paint your home’s exterior sometime in the future, pick a garage door that will complement the colors you will probably choose for the rest of the house. Although repainting your front and garage doors is not difficult, having to do so soon after installing them would be a bit annoying.
Besides the architecture, you should also consider the landscaping in your yard. Try to envision how the home’s colors will look against the trees, bushes and flowers. Also, consider how the sunlight hits your home throughout the day.
3. Pick Door Styles That Complement Each Other
The styles of your garage door and front door do not have to be the same. Sometimes you can give your home a more distinguished look by picking complementary or contrasting styles. If you go this route, you can still unify the style if you choose the same windows or colors for the garage and front door. You can also try out similar-looking but distinct door features.
When searching for styles online, you may find it useful to take a picture of your home’s exterior for reference so that you can visualize more clearly how a certain door will look. Many garage door companies let you upload a photo of your house and display how specific garage doors would look. This can help give you peace of mind when you decide to buy.
Materials
Each material gives a certain impression and influences the overall design of your house in a certain way. When considering door materials, it’s important to keep the following in mind:
1. Wood
Wood is perhaps the first material that comes to mind when thinking about front and garage doors. After all, the first doors were made of wood, and it remains a popular material today.
Wood is a broad category, and there are hundreds of options available, so it is not difficult to find one that matches the look of your home. These doors can be painted or stained, and it is easy to repair scratches. Doors with stain-grade wood can be costly, but they provide a sense of warmth that can greatly boost the curb appeal of your home.
If you want the appearance of wood without the cost, you may want to consider doors made of wood-veneer skins with an engineered-wood core, which significantly reduces warping or doors of other materials that mimic the look of wood.
2. Wood Composite
Wood composite doors are as strong as steel but have the appearance and texture of wood. This garage door material typically features a wood frame with sheets of fiberboard on top, and higher-end models contain higher-density fiberboard skins and often have details that emulate natural wood, such as grooves and overlays. You can also paint or stain them.
3. Steel
Steel is a popular material for both entry and garage doors. This material offers many aesthetic options from vintage to modern and can be easily painted to match or complement the rest of your home’s exterior.
High-quality steel garage doors consist of two layers of galvanized steel. The door’s surface can be clad with a composite material or primed and painted with a durable topcoat finish.
Steel entry doors usually contain a solid cor to insulate the doorway and secure the lock set.
4. Fiberglass
Fiberglass comprises 40 percent of domestic entry doors and comes in a smooth skin that you can paint or a textured skin that comes painted or resembles stained wood.
5. Aluminum
Although not one of the more popular options for residential doors, aluminum is used on occasion. These doors are custom built to fit your home’s opening and come in a variety of colors and finishes. They feature aluminum panels or translucent glass panels to allow more light into the house. Aluminum garage doors give a home an open, modern feel.
6. Vinyl Doors
Vinyl doors look similar to fiberglass doors and are often chosen for their resistance to dents, but they may not be available in a wide variety of colors.
When shopping for a matching entry and garage door, it’s a good idea to get both from the same manufacturer. This will help ensure that all parts look good together.
Architecture and Style
The style of entry door and garage you choose will impact the curb appeal of your home in a certain way. Before you decide on a garage and entry door, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the various styles available. Let’s start with garage door styles:
1. Traditional Doors
If you live in a home with a well-recognized American-style home, such as Colonial, Ranch, Victorian, Craftsman or Cape, or a European style such as Spanish, Mediterranean, Tudor or French Country, leading manufacturers should have garage doors that match the style of your home. They should also be available in a variety of colors and materials.
2. Carriage Doors
Carriage style garage doors are commonly found on many home styles. Although they emulate the appearance of doors on old carriage houses, they also can work on contemporary houses. Whereas the original carriage doors swung open from the middle, these carriage-style garage doors fold open like most other modern garage doors.
3. Raised-Panel Doors
Raised-panel doors are of the most popular garage door styles and are often the first style that comes to mind when garage doors are mentioned. Because of the style’s enormous popularity, raised-panel doors are available in all materials, including fiberglass, wood, aluminum and steel.
4. Contemporary Doors
When it comes to contemporary designs, it is particularly important that the house and garage door style match. For instance, if your home’s design features high-tech materials and clean lines, the garage door should look similar. One common option is tempered glass panels encased in aluminum frames.
Entry doors also come in many styles, including:
- Panel: A popular style that has existed since the Georgian Era, panel doors feature raised or flat panels. The panels come in several sizes and provide a sense of depth. They go particularly well with Colonial and cottage-style homes, and you can paint them in several colors.
- Flush: Flush-style doors are becoming increasingly common on contemporary modern houses. Flush doors work well with minimal exteriors due to their smooth surfaces.
- Glazed: Glazed doors feature small windows that serve to brighten up the interior of a home and add character to the entryway. They work with a variety of house styles, from a farmhouse to a mid-century modern house.
- French: These classic double doors feature glass panes and serve as both a window and a door.
- Carved: These doors often feature sculptural images and ornate details. Commonly found on historic buildings, these doors sometimes represent the history and heritage of a home.
Colors
Coordinating the colors of your garage door, front door and the rest of your exterior is a common dilemma for homeowners. Most homes feature three different color groups — the siding is one color, the trim is a second color, and the doors and shutters are a third color. There are naturally exceptions, especially for Victorians and other historic homes, which have their own conventions when it comes to colors.
When considering garage door and front door color combinations, here are some suggestions:
- Account for the material. If you’ve already decided on a material for your doors, that material will help determine what colors will be available. Wood doors, for example, may have more color choices than steel ones.
- Examine the colors in various lights. When picking a color for your front door and garage door, you should get an idea of how the colors appear during different times of the day. The angle of the sun can drastically affect the look of a color. For example, a door painted red may look the color of a fire truck at noon, but more of a rusty color when the sun sets. Try looking at the colors you’re considering in bright and lower lights.
- Paint them the same color. This tip is similar to matching your belt and shoe color. Think of your front door, garage door and shutters as accessories and paint them all the same color. This foolproof method will pull your home together. As mentioned above, aim to select three main colors for your exterior. These colors will look best if you choose a neutral hue for the siding, a slightly darker or brighter shade of that same color for the trim, and an accent color for the shutters and doors.
- Paint them a color that complements your home’s main color. First, pick a main color that is suitable for your home’s style and location. Then choose complementary colors for the doors and other details. This will provide a contrast that will make your home look gorgeous. For the main color, a more neutral color usually works best. The complementary colors for the smaller details can be bolder.
- Pick a contrasting color that pops. If you would like to stand out more in the neighborhood, you can choose a more vibrant color scheme. Just make sure it isn’t ostentatious or gaudy. You can pick a less common color that accentuates your home. For instance, you could paint your garage door black or your front and garage door bright yellow. Depending on the house, even a pretty blue or dark aubergine could look interesting.
- Decorative elements should complement your exterior’s main colors. Railings, shutters, cornices and other decorative elements should complement your home’s main color.
- Pick combinations that make you feel good. There are several schools of thought when it comes to coordinating exterior colors, but ultimately the essential thing is that the colors make you happy.
Find What You’re Looking for at Toledo’s Quality Overhead Door
We at Quality Overhead Door, we offer a vast selection of products, so coordinating the exterior of your home shouldn’t be a problem. The products we offer are of the highest quality and are produced by the world’s most reputable manufacturers. We are authorized dealers of Clopay, CHI, Wayne Dalton and LiftMaster and service all brands and models.
In addition to garage doors and openers, we also sell entry doors, awnings, fireplaces and much more. Our family-owned business has proudly served the greater Toledo, Ohio, area since 1982, and we attribute our success and longevity to our large selection, reliability and premium customer service.
We invite you to browse our large collection of residential and commercial products. If you have any questions, feel free to write to us using our contact form or give us a call at 419.578.8700, and our experienced associates will promptly assist you. You can also request an estimate here.
Additional Resources on Complementing Entry & Garage Doors: