Should your garage door be the same color as your house?

How do you pick a residential garage door that perfectly suits your home? With a bit of know-how, it’s easy to pass the exterior design vibe check with flying colors. You can keep it simple by choosing a door that matches an existing color on your home’s exterior or go bold with an accent color.

Garage door colors are a form of expression, so you can have some fun with it. Here’s some general guidance to support your decision making.

Making your garage door the same color as your house

There are two ways you can make your garage door colors match your house:

1. Match your garage door color to your siding

If your siding is a single color, for example render or cladding, it’s easier to find a door that matches. If your house is brick, matching the door to your siding is more difficult because of the color variation in the building material.

2. Match your garage door color to your trims

Matching to trims like window frames, fascias, soffits, etc. is easy if your secondary color is consistent. If you have gray window frames, white soffits, and a brick house, it might be harder to choose which color will maintain visual continuity.

These approaches help to unify your exterior design and narrow down your color options. But, it’s not the only way to make your garage door complement your exterior. You could introduce an accent color to your palette instead. This will make your garage door a real feature that adds extra visual interest to your home. Just remember the 60-30-10 rule – this reflects the percentage share of your primary, secondary, and accent colors to maintain visual balance.

Combining colors

There are countless color combinations that look great, but if you look around your neighborhood, you’ll probably see quite a bit of overlap. This might give you a bit of inspiration – whether that’s to copy a nearby house or buck the trend entirely.

On white houses, it’s common to see black garage doors for high contrast. It’s also common to see white garage doors that seamlessly blend into the exterior design, or gray garage doors for something more neutral.

On houses with warm, neutral tones, complementary colors like tan, wood-effect, or sandstone garage doors are popular.

When it comes down to it, if your garage doors tie in with your overall color scheme and you’re happy with how it looks, you’ve found the right combination.

Choosing a garage door color the same as your siding

Pros

• Makes your house look larger
• Keeps your exterior simple
• Unifies your look
• Can look elegant
• Directs attention to other features

Cons

• Lacks contrast
• Can look stark or boring
• Doesn’t make the door a feature
• Difficult to maintain a color match over time
• Isn’t very creative
• Can increase heat absorption if your house is a dark color

Choosing a garage door color the same as your trims

Pros

• Looks coordinated
• Creates color balance
• Makes your door stand out
• Ties in with other trims for consistency

Cons

• Draws attention to your door
• Restricts choice as trims are often white or gray
• Could overshadow other features of your façade
• Limits creativity and flexibility
  
  

Will you make your garage door the same color as your house?

Whether you choose to perfectly match with your siding or complement your house with a secondary or accent color, a new residential garage door can give your home a face-lift. A great way to visualize how a garage door will look is to use our DoorVisions door builder, which allows you to apply door designs to a photograph of your house. It’s also a great idea to order color samples to see how different colors look in different lights.