As your garage door is the largest moving object in your home, and amounts to more than a third of its façade, shouldn’t you give it more attention? Did you know that any real estate agent will inform you that changing your garage door will help you get your asking price and be sold even faster?
Have you found that your garage door is looking kind of shabby and deserves a transformation to give it a better appearance? What can be done in order to modernize it?
Here are some observations that will give you ideas for a makeover of your garage door and ensure you are up on market trends.
What are the current trends in garage door styles?
If your home is over 20 years old, it is very possible that you’ll have to choose a more classic style. If you are thinking about building a new house, contemporary (like F. L. Wright’s Prairie style) and modern styles with clean, straight lines and in darker colors like brown and black, are gaining popularity. If you live in a rural area, carriage house and ranch styles are still very fashionable.
For each of these architectural styles, garage door manufacturers are ready with options for you. Carriage-house and traditional models are presently the most requested, especially by baby boomers. Younger adults prefer the more modern and contemporary styles, along with all the “smart” features available to link their home and phones via WiFi.
Energy efficient garage doors
We are all conscious of needing to do something to reduce our ecological footprint. We must think about durable products that allow us to reduce our heating costs, including that of our garage. We often overlook the fact that even if we don’t heat our garage, the cold air from it enters our house each time we open the door to the garage.
Garage door manufacturers are aware of this and are increasingly offering homeowners garage door systems with at least a 20-year service life, thanks to using more robust steel hardware and more solidly assembled products.
Also offered are garage doors with some of the best performing insulation values and most efficient weathersealing systems available. These features help to keep your garage warm in the winter while also keeping it cool all summer long. The offshoot from this is that your heating and air conditioning costs will be much lower.
Door openers sporting the latest high-tech features
In the last 5 years, there have been big improvements in the energy efficiency and Internet connectivity of electric garage door openers to make them perform better and simplify your life.
If you use the light from your door opener as the main light source in your garage, be aware that there are only some models of door opener that can use compact fluorescent bulbs without creating interference between the remote and the opener.
In addition, you can opt for an opener with a DC motor allowing you to use less energy. This is because the motor starts slowly, speeds up to its regular speed then stops slowly. Many of these door opener models can be equipped with a backup battery.
Use your smart phone to open your garage – why not?
In 2014, Internet functions started to be available for garage door openers. Now you can open, close and monitor the status of your garage door from wherever you are, in the world! It’s even more practical when your kids get home from school. Instead of carrying a key around their neck or using the exterior keypad, they can use their phone to get in the house in complete safety… if they lift their eyes from their screen for a couple of seconds… to be sure everything is working properly.
With other smart home apps available, the next step will be to integrate all these Internet apps into one in order to avoid opening many apps to do all you want to do in your home. Apple is predicting that its HomeKit will be ready to go in 2017. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame has been working on an AI (artificial intelligence) system to control a house since 2016 and that should be demoed in the near future.
Another interesting accessory that could prove to be useful in your garage is a laser pointer to make parking a breeze. It is really so much better and classier than using a tennis ball hanging from the ceiling, isn’t it?
Garage doors are not designed to be installed by just anybody
For many reasons, not the least of which is your safety and that of your loved ones, have your garage door installed by professionals.Contact a garage door specialist in your area. If you would like to learn more about what’s new in garage doors, why not visit their showroom? It will be their pleasure to explain the whole range of doors they have and the ones that fit the architectural style of your house. You can also send them a request for an online quotation.
Lastly, if you are planning on buying a new garage door in the coming weeks, take a little time and use a design center like the one Garaga has to create your own personalized garage door. You can also peruse their image gallery.
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