Which garage door to choose, they need to open straight up

Today we will answer a question sent by our visitor Mark.

Hi, I need to buy garage doors for my garage and I can’t decide which one would do best for me. The door opening is 17 x 7 feet. I want the door to open straight up so I don’t need free space in front of the garage. I want the doors in one piece (double doors). What is your advice?

Thanks, Mark

It’s an interesting question. We could do with the information about the ceiling height in the garage, but we will presume it is standard.

It is important that you pointed out you want the door to open straight up. This leaves you with three possible solutions: roller shutter garage doors, sectional overhead garage doors and sliding sectional garage doors. You can have a look and learn more about each of these garage door types.

All three of them are suitable for your dimension of door opening and all three will probably be motorized with remote control (you didn’t specify that). If you want to save space at one side of the garage, you probably won’t take the sliding doors as they get fixed to the wall and need free space by the wall to slide there when they are opened (if you for some reason don’t have space on the ceiling, then these are actually a strong option). So you are left with the roller shutter doors and sectional overhead doors.

Roller shutter garage doors are lighter, easier to install and don’t need space at the ceiling  – they only require some space for the box on the inner side of the garage to store the shutter. Their setbacks are that they are not as strong as sectional doors can be and that you don’t have a lot of options in regard to material – they are mostly made from plastic or aluminum but you can choose the color. The size of the roller shutter garage doors can be anything you want – they are custom made for any size and there aren’t really any standard sizes for this type of doors.

Sectional overhead garage doors are generally stronger and you can choose a variety of materials and designs. They can be made from plastic, wood, metal and also some other materials. You can have small openings (windows) in the doors and there are plenty of design options available. However, they take up more space on the ceiling in the garage and the motor for closing and opening has to be stronger. Your garage door opening is 17×7. Standard overhead garage doors are 16×7 so you have two options: you can have the door made custom (it may cost a bit more) or you can make the door opening smaller by adding one line of bricks: IMPORTANT – before you do any of those, please measure you garage door opening very precisely and check the exact dimensions you need for installing a particular model of doors so you won’t have problems when you want to install them!

Our advise is to consider what you want and need. If you don’t mind the roller shutter look of your garage door, don’t have a lot of space at the ceiling or want to save a few dollars (the price of a roller shutter garage door is generally a bit lower) then this is a very good option.

If you want to have more options about the design of your door and from which material they are made, you should lean towards the sectional overhead garage doors. They need more mounting space at the ceiling of the garage and the price is usually a bit higher, but there are plenty of design options and they are stronger.

Hope this helps, if you need more info, please feel free to contact us again.