A new overhead garage door installation will add comfort, value, and safety to your home but not all types of garage doors are perfect fits for all types of homes. In an environment like Toronto’s, it’s important to make sure that every part of your home that’s exposed to the elements is fully capable of taking the relentless battering of snow, wind, ice, and rain while still looking good and providing adequate insulation. In this post, we’re going to take a look at what the different types of commercially available garage doors bring to the table and why you may want one type over the others for your home.

Your Garage Door Installation Affects More Than Just Your Car

The garage door is more than just the portal through which your car enters the garage, it’s the largest single component of your home’s exterior. As such it needs to bring something to the table in terms of design, function, and value. Here are some of the most popular types of garage door installation.

Wood: The traditional mainstay of the garage door universe wood can be coolly utilitarian or wonderfully rustic and charming. It can be painted in any fashion you so desire and will hold its own against the occasional bump or baseball being thrown into it. It’s also one of the less expensive options. Wood by itself can provide reasonably good insulation but don’t forget you’re going to have to paint it often and do a lot of maintenance work to ensure it doesn’t start to rot away in the damp lakeside climate of Toronto.

Steel: Steel garage doors have come into their own in recent years and now represent a real threat to the primacy of the wooden garage door. There are a lot of reasons for that. The first is the increased security you’ll experience from a steel garage door. The second reason steel doors have gained in popularity is that, if properly cared for, they can last for decades. Caring for your steel door will mean keeping salt and other corrosives off of it, repainting or re-staining it fairly often, and doing your best to avoid dings and dents. Typically though, with heavier gauge steel doors dings, etc. won’t be a major issue.

Aluminum: Aluminum doors span the quality spectrum from inexpensive ding magnets to durable, attractive heavy-duty versions that have laminated panels attached to the exterior to resist dents. High-quality aluminum garage doors are not cheap but they’re rust-proof and lighter than steel doors and will last just as long. They also require far less maintenance than wood or steel and can be painted to match your home’s exterior. In addition, because aluminum doors are so light they’ll typically put less strain on your garage door motor which means longer life for that apparatus, as well as longer life for the torsion springs that do the actual lifting of the door.

Additional Info- Because the garage door is the largest single component of your home’s exterior it must be properly insulated. Read more about our insulated garage doors service in Toronto to find out more. Ideally, you’ll want your new garage door installation to be pre-insulated but keep in mind too that you can always affix insulation to the back of the garage door panels at a later date.

If you’d like to learn more about the various overhead garage door replacement options call the garage door experts at Smart Doors. We’ll match you up with the perfect garage door for your home so you can start enjoying enhanced energy savings, security, and home value right away.