Your garage doors are much more important than you probably think. Aside from being a barrier between your belongings and the outside world, they often influence the way your house is perceived by others.
If you ever find yourself in need to sell your old home, for instance, its garage will inevitably influence the number of offers you are going to get. Clean-looking and functional doors make the whole structure seem much more solid. As a result, potential buyers may feel more confident and decide to sign on the dotted line.
Types of Garage Doors
Before choosing which material you would like, you should first choose what type of garage shutter door you would like. Your garage door options include:
Roller garage door
The roller garage door is the most basic type of garage door. It is a single sheet of corrugated material that is rolled up on the roof atop the garage. The roller door can be manually or electronically opened or closed and is easy-to-use. The roller door offers great security but offers little on the front of insulation for your home.
Sectional garage door
You may be thinking, what type of garage door is most durable? The answer is a sectional garage door. The sectional sliding garage door is made from a series of connected and interlocking parts, usually using high-grade aluminium or steel. This type of garage door is dearer than the roller shutter, but offers greater security, insulation, and usually comes in more styles. The roller shutter is almost always electronically operated and rises back over the roof of the garage.
Should You Really Care About Garage Doors Materials?
Maintaining a house is no easy feat. Ordinary wear and tear, violent weather, temperatures, and accidents always leave signs of their passage. As the years go by, parts of your home may need repairs and replacements. Your garage doors are no exception to this rule.
Picking the right material allows you to satisfy your aesthetic needs as well as your practical ones, so what material is used for garage doors? A thought out selection can also help you manage your savings.
There is no commandment to follow when it comes to choosing garage door designs. Nevertheless, you should keep one thing in mind: going with a specific material means benefiting from its pros, but also having to deal with the cons.
What Does The Market Offer?
In recent years, garage door manufacturers experimented with a variety of new elements and chemicals. To keep this article brief and pleasant to read, though, we’ll try to stick to the most common solutions. These are the materials you’ll usually find at a specialised store:
- Steel: the most widely used and popular of solutions. Appreciated for its sturdiness, steel quickly became a standard for garage doors. Relatively cheap to install and maintain, steel doors are perfect to keep uninvited guests out. Unfortunately, this garage door can rust, so some maintenance is required.
- Aluminium: lighter, but also easier to damage. If lifting a heavy steel door doesn’t sound too exciting and installing a motor isn’t part of the plan, aluminium could be a suitable in-between. The naturally-occurring element is lighter than most other metals, but more prone to denting and bending;
- Wood: traditional and classy wood garage doors. For centuries, our ancestors used timber to build their homes and shelters. Wooden garage doors perfectly fit with a brick and mortar house but are also extremely expensive to maintain. Wood can stand the weather well, but needs constant care over the years.
- Vinyl and Fibreglass: affordable, but riddled with shortcomings. Artificial materials such as these two are easy to produce and rather cheap to acquire. Their plastic nature makes them easy to clean. The same can’t be said for maintenance: these materials suffer the effects of the sun, eventually turning yellow and losing their vibrancy as the days go by.
Quick Pros and Cons for Garage Door Materials
| STEEL | • Durable, stronger than wood or aluminium
• Sensibly priced • Low maintenance (not affected by weather, cracking or warping) • Comes in various looks and convincing textures (e.g. wood) • Can be powder-coated • Full Colorbond colour range available |
• Won’t fare well to impact (dents from footballs, basketballs)
• Can corrode or rust in coastal areas (best to powder-coat brackets and hinges) |
| WOOD LOOK | • Has the strength of steel
• Can be hand-painted • Better at avoiding splitting and rotting than wood |
More expensive than standard Colorbond colours |
| FIBREGLASS | • Can be translucent to allow lighting from outside
• Can mimic various materials |
• Can turn yellow over time
• Not commonly used these days • Material can break easily • Poor insulation • Usually restricted to one piece tilt style |
| VINYL | • Various vinyl wraps available | • More expensive & limited colour availability
• Concerns of fading, peeling and flaking in Australia’s harsh weather conditions |
| ALUMINIUM | • Lighter than steel
• Has improved over the years to be sturdier than before • Comes in textures and finishes like: Wood Look, Honeycomb, Perspex, Aluminium Composite • Can be cladded with virtually any material |
• More expensive |
| WOOD | • Traditional, natural styles and materials for curb appeal
• Better insulation than steel • Can use virtually any wood |
• Need regular maintenance (every 1-2 years)
• Can be expensive • Can rot or warp over time in extreme temperatures • When wet can add weight and stress to the motor and springs |
Where to get your garage door serviced, repaired and installed
Gryphon Garage Doors is one of the best garage door companies for sectional and roller door repair in Perth, and have been helping Australians protect their homes and commercial spaces in stylish ways for over 25 years. Why is this important? Well it means we’ve come across countless different jobs, and have had to overcome each one. So no matter your situation, you gotta get a Gryphon. We have:
- Finger proof safety
- Quietest motors on the market
- Trained professionals
- Customised products
- Warranty up to 7 years!
- After sales service
Your garage broke down and you need it to open ASAP? Not a problem, give us a call and we will try our best to get to you today and open your space. We look forward to hearing from you.
