Should You buy a Wooden or Steel Garage Door?

As is the case so often, the best answer to this question really depends on what you appreciate the most in a garage door.  Neither one or the other really is objectively “better,” so you have to figure out what’s most important to you and then purchase the garage door that fits your needs.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Wooden Doors

If you have a home with a higher value that you really want to look nice and to maintain a good resale value, then wood is the way to go.  It’s also generally preferable if your garage door faces the street, where many people will see it.

A big knock against wood (pardon the pun), however, is that it’s high maintenance.  And if you don’t perform the regular maintenance, you will end up buying a new garage door.  You will have to repaint it every few years to keep the moisture out and warping in check.

Wooden garage doors also tend to be at the higher end of the price range, so if that’s a problem, then you might have to consider going the steel route.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Steel Garage Doors

Although they don’t make as good of an impression as wooden garage doors, the primary benefits of steel garage doors are that they have a high resistance to the elements, require almost no maintenance, and they generally insulate better than wood.

Steel doors also may rust, but before you purchase yours make sure it comes with a polyester coating that prevents rusting.  If it does rust, removing the rust isn’t difficult or time-consuming, but it is time you have to spend maintaining your garage door.

Steel doors with a low thickness of steel do dent and scratch more easily.  However, if you purchase a garage door with 24-gauge steel, scratches and dents are much harder to pick up.

Another benefit of steel doors is that they tend to last longer than wooden doors.

You Can Have the Best of Both Worlds

It doesn’t happen often in life, but you can have your cake and eat it too with garage doors.

What we mean by this is that you can purchase steel doors that look like wooden doors.  They offer the beauty and higher property value of a wooden garage door, along with the lower maintenance of steel.

In the end, the choice is yours.  But now you have the information necessary to make an informed choice that works for you.

Universal Garage Door Repair
2150 South 1300 East, Suite 500
Salt Lake City, UT 84106
(801) 784-4550