What is the best Garage Door for a Garage Conversion?
by Zap Garage Doors|25 October, 2023
Garage conversions are a fantastic investment, which can dramatically increase the volume of usable spaces in your property. They can be used for practical solutions, like a living area or a spare bedroom, or for fun spaces dedicated to your hobbies, like a home gym, games room, recording studio or workshop.
If you’re converting your garage, the nature of how you use your garage will inevitably change. So, you need to find a garage door that best fits this new purpose.
Rather than offering a simple opening that allows you to park and secure your car inside, you’ll have a new set of requirements, which keeps the room easy to access, usable and attractive, while still ensuring the same degree of security.
By replacing your current garage doors, you can find a new solution that enhances the space, making it look and feel far more stylish, both outside and inside.
At ZAP Garage Doors, we provide a huge range of garage doors, including all of the doors listed below. Plus, we offer a free survey to all our customers, ensuring they find the best match for their property. To find out more about our garage doors, or to enlist our assistance for your upcoming conversion, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
You can also keep reading to find a full list of all the most common garage door types for garage conversions, plus a detailed breakdown of the pros and cons of each option.
What are the key factors to consider when choosing a garage door?
When you choose a new garage door for your conversion, there are a number of factors that you need to consider, based on the space available and how you tend to use it.
The key questions to ask yourself include:
- What material do you need? You can choose from a wide range of materials, including fibreglass, wood, steel, or composite garage doors.
- What colour would you like the door to be?
- Do you have any design or aesthetic requirements?
- Do you need the garage door to be insulated?
- Do you want the garage door to have windows?
- Do you need the garage door to have sound-proofing?
- Do you want to prioritise aesthetics or durability and low maintenance requirements?
- Do you want to invest in an automated door opening system? If so, do you want this to be remote-controlled, or integrated with your smart home technologies?
- What security features do you need?
- Does your local area have any legislation about building conversions? This will be particularly relevant for listed properties.
What is the best garage door type for a garage conversion?
Side-Hinged Garage Doors
Side-hinged garage doors open outwards, using a hinge located on the door’s side.
What are their benefits?
- The entrances are designed to resemble a standard door (rather than primarily being designed for car access). So, this helps the conversion to achieve a more seamless expansion from the rest of the house, as it feels more like another room.
- Side-hinged garage doors are easy to access. Since the entire door doesn’t need to be lifted, they can be entered and exited easily.
- They are extremely robust, durable and low-maintenance.
- They are highly secure, often including sophisticated locking systems.
- They can be made to include windows.
- They can easily be insulated.
- They are available in a wide range of designs and materials, and are readily customisable.
See Our Side-Hinged Garage Doors
Sectional Garage Doors
Sectional garage doors are made from a series of panels. When the door is opened, these panels slide upwards, moving so that they lie flat along the roof of the garage.
What are their benefits?
- They are extremely space-efficient, as the doors do not need to swing inwards to open. As a result, they are ideally suited to smaller garages. Since they don’t need to swing outwards, either, they are also a great fit for properties with smaller outdoor spaces.
- They can be kept partially open, making entering and exiting easier.
- They are extremely durable and weather resistant.
- They can easily be automated, if required.
- They can easily be insulated.
- If required, they can easily be automated, and opened and closed through a remote control.
- They are highly secure, with advanced locking mechanisms.
- They can be designed to offer sound insulation.
- They are available in a wide range of designs, colours, styles and finishes.
See Our Sectional Garage Doors
Roller Garage Doors
Roller garage doors feature a number of smaller panels that, when the door is opened, roll up and around a coil attached to the garage roof.
What are their benefits?
- They are compact, and extremely space-efficient. As a result, they’re a great fit for smaller garages.
- They open upwards, making them ideally suited to garages with limited indoor outdoor or indoor space.
- The use of a central coil also makes these doors a great solution for garages with a low ceiling height.
- They are easy to operate, requiring no physical effort.
- They can easily be insulated.
- They are extremely secure, with many models featuring sophisticated in-built locking systems.
- They are highly durable, weather resistant, and require a very low level of maintenance.
- They are available in a variety of different colours and designs, to suit a wide range of property aesthetics.
Up & Over Garage Doors
Up-and-over garage doors are one of the most common garage door types, featuring one single panel. When the door is opened, this panel moves upwards and then backwards along the roof of the garage.
What are their benefits?
- They offer a wide and unobstructed entrance
- They are simple and easy to use.
- They are an affordable option.
- They can be partially opened, allowing you to keep the room well-ventilated.
- They are extremely durable, low maintenance, and weather resistant.
- They can be easily automated, if required.
- Since they swing outwards, when they open, they don’t take up any space inside the room.
- Up-and-over garage doors are readily customisable, and can be made to accommodate a wide range of different designs, colours and garage sizes.
See Our Up & Over Garage Doors
When looking for a new garage door for your garage conversion, think about which would offer the best fit for your intended purpose for the room, plus your design preferences, security requirements and the amount of space that you have available.
At Zap Garage Doors, our team is on hand to offer you a free survey and consultation, to help you find the best garage door to suit your specific conversion.
If you’d like to find out more, or to enlist the assistance of our garage door specialists, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
