What Color Should I Paint my Garage Doors?

That seems like a simple enough question, right? I guess it used to be, but people are getting a bit carried away with their 'innovative creativity' with front doors and garage doors currently, at least based on some photos that I found on pinterest! I tend to be a bit (well, a lot) more conservative, believing that the garage door and front door, in most instances, should not be matched to one another, and that the garage doors should follow a couple of basic guidelines, depending on the size of the home and the materials utilized on it:

• For a home that has siding or stucco, I often will utilize the same, or almost the same, color on the garage doors as the color as the house. This is particularly true if the home is very small, as it will help the home look larger. Painting the doors bright white or a contrasting color will chop the home up, visually, and make it appear much smaller. If your home has a white or contrasting trim around the windows you can utilize that same trim around the garage doors to tie the doors to the home color scheme more closely, and then utilize a hi contrast color for the front door or doors, to draw attention to the door.
• I am still a bit of a purist with front doors, opting for colors that blend with some element of the home, but with far more contrast (black or charcoal for traditional or contemporary homes with dark, clear roof colors, tinted dark reds or red browns for dark red brown roofs, and so forth)
• For a home with brick or stone siding or trim, hi contrast traditional colors blend well, such as black and charcoal with most red brick, or grays and browns with other split face and mixed stones

Check the attached pinterest photos, and my recommendations for alternative solutions, keeping in mind your homeowner association and area of the country!

If you love green, and live in an area with 4 seasons as shown here, this color combination might be very comfortable. Add a soft brown/beige cobblestone walkway directly to the front door, and a couple of pilasters with lights atop at the sidewalk junction, and change the front door! With the tan/brown roof the front door should be a rich mid tone brown with a green undertone.

This home is close to perfect, in terms of paint. The garage doors allow it to look expansive. It needs a tree on the left, some walkway pizazz, and an accent door color, perhaps in a deep burgundy red, and new exterior lights that are in better proportion to the home.

The primary mistake here is the utilization of the wrong hue of gray paint. The stucco on the home is painted a warm gray. The shingles on the home are a deeper hue of the same warm gray. The garage door is a very cool blue gray bordering on lavender gray. The undertones in these gray paints are at war with one another! An all white garage door would be better in this instance for two reasons: one, you wouldn't notice all those itty bitty windows, and two, at least the two gray hues would not be fighting with one another. An alternative is to paint the garage door the same paint as the stucco adjacent on either side. Magnifying this mistake further is the peach tone stone on the siding, and on the driveway with the neutral gray concrete grout. The peach tone is warm like the warm grays, also accentuating how inappropriate the gray selected for the garage door looks. A good front door color for this home, if you want something more than the white would be a deep warm charcoal or a warm black-not a blue black.

This is an interesting home. I would love to see some landscaping up front and a bit more of a presence for the entry porch rather than the side entry from the driveway, but the home itself is attractive, the painting appropriate, the front door a nice accent, and given the width of the home, the white garage doors don't disturb me.... But why do we have perpetual Christmas on the right wall? To extend the visual width of the property, the fencing should be painted the same gray as the siding and the green of the evergreen trees brought over to the left side of the home's landscaping for balance. That, a white estate mailbox in the foreground with a small boxwood hedge and some perennials would add a bit of fun to the street entry to the home.

This very contemporary home has utilized stain grade garage doors. The selection is appropriate given the simplicity of style, the incorporation of the same wood species on the entry pilasters, and, surely elsewhere in the home. Everything is very clean, elegant and tropical. So why are there fitted cobbles in a red peach tone utilized for the entirety of the driveway??? Perhaps the budget would not support the original selection at the end of the project, or perhaps someone just wasn't paying attention:

When selecting all of the home elements for either a remodel, or for a new home construction, try to stay as consistent as possible with your elements. That doesn't mean everything has to be boring and 'matchie, it just means that if you have hard right angles everywhere else, and large elements, like doors and windows, then it makes the most sense to carry that same idea throughout: like large tiles, or large concrete pads with stone in between that is very contemporary for your driveway product, rather than a cobblestone element that is better suited to a more traditional style. Just keep 'consistency' in mind throughout.