Choosing a door
How to choose a garage door for your home
Most people work out how to choose a garage door by starting with what it looks like. Start with headroom and distance from the sea instead, because between them they eliminate half the options before taste comes into it.
Start with headroom
A sectional door runs back along the ceiling on horizontal tracks, so it needs clear space above the opening. A roller door coils into a drum directly above the opening and needs far less.
If your headroom is tight, or the ceiling carries storage, lighting, a hoist or a mezzanine, that decision has been made for you. Everything else, including colour, profile and material, follows from it.
This is also why we measure before quoting. It takes a few minutes and it saves choosing a door that cannot physically go in.
Then work out how close to the sea you are
In this part of the country, salt air is what ends garage doors. Within sight of the water it attacks steel from the bottom panel upward, and by the time you can see it from the drive it is usually through the coating.
Close to the water, aluminium resists it far better and is generally worth the premium. Cedar with a marine-grade treatment also handles it, at the cost of periodic recoating. A few kilometres inland, that argument weakens sharply and a COLORSTEEL® sectional door is much better value.
This is the single biggest difference between a Mangawhai job and a Warkworth one, and it is the thing a national supplier's catalogue will not tell you.
The four materials, honestly
| Door | Best for | The trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Sectional COLORSTEEL® | Most homes. Best range of profiles, insulation and windows. | Needs headroom. Not the best choice within a few streets of the sea. |
| Roller | Tight headroom, tight budget, sheds and rentals. | No panel insulation, and a less architectural face. |
| Aluminium | Coastal homes and wide openings. Over 100 powdercoat colours. | Costs more than steel, and inland that premium buys you little. |
| Cedar | Character and warmth no printed woodgrain matches. | It is the only door here that needs recoating. |
Then the things people actually enjoy choosing
The full COLORSTEEL® range, or powdercoat for an exact match to joinery or cladding. Try the range on a photo of your own garage to narrow it down, and we bring physical samples to the free measure so the final call is made against the real thing.
The line and texture of the door face. It usually comes down to your cladding: fine ribbed profiles suit weatherboard, flat and woodgrain profiles suit plaster and cedar, pressed panels sit happily with brick.
Worth it if the garage is attached to the house, or you use it as a workshop, gym or office. It also makes the door quieter, which matters if a bedroom is above it.
Rectangular window panels in frosted or clear glass, for natural light without giving up privacy.
Fitting it with the new door costs less than a second visit later. Look for safety sensors, quiet operation and phone control.
Easy to forget at quote stage, and the thing that decides whether water and leaves come under the door for the next fifteen years.
Common questions
Sectional doors, by a distance. They offer the widest choice of profiles and colours, they take insulation and window panels, and they suit most houses architecturally. People end up somewhere else where the garage will not take the tracks running back along the ceiling, or where a roller door doing the same job for a little less money is the sensible call.
It costs a little less than a sectional door of the same size and it is not a worse door. A roller door coils into a roll above the opening rather than running back along the ceiling on tracks, so nothing intrudes into the room and the ceiling stays clear for storage, lighting or a hoist. On a shed, a rental or a second garage it is often the sensible choice regardless of budget. What you give up is panel insulation, the choice of profiles, and the flatter face of a sectional door.
A well-specified door that gets serviced will last many years, and the parts that fail first are the moving ones: springs, rollers, cables and the motor, rather than the door panel. What shortens a door's life most in this region is salt air acting on the wrong material, and skipping servicing until something breaks. Both are avoidable at the specification stage.
Either works, and matching the roof is the more common approach because it ties the house together when seen from the street. Because we work in the COLORSTEEL range, matching a COLORSTEEL roof exactly is straightforward. If you are matching cladding, joinery or a specific architectural colour instead, powdercoat gives you a far wider palette to work from, at a slightly higher price.
Aluminium, in most cases, because salt-laden air is what ends garage doors near the water and aluminium resists it far better than steel does. Cedar with a marine-grade treatment also works, at the cost of periodic recoating. A few kilometres inland the argument weakens sharply and a COLORSTEEL sectional door becomes much better value for the same money. We will tell you which side of that line you are on.
It is worth doing, because fitting the motor with the new door costs less than bringing someone back for a second visit, and the door and opener get balanced to each other from the start. Look for safety sensors, quiet operation and phone control. If budget means doing it later, tell us, and we will make sure the door is ready for it.
From the bridge to the Brynderwyns
Talk to Chris, not a call centre
Drop us a line and we'll come back to you within 24 hours. Quotes are free and carry no obligation.
We're a family business. Chris owns it, quotes it and answers the phone himself, so you get a straight answer the first time you ask.