Forget Tilt-Up Garage Doors: A More Stylish Alternative With A Rustic Look

Tilt-up garage doors are a suburban staple, providing easy access to your garage and pleasantly polished curb appeal. However, if you're looking to upgrade to a charmingly rustic look, carriage-style garage doors are a stylish option well worth looking into. These doors are designed to emulate traditional 19th-century carriage houses, where wealthy families kept their horses and, yes, carriages. Decorated with handcrafted, intricate hardware, carriage house doors served as status symbols, demonstrative of the owner's wealth. While the rise of the automobile eventually rendered the carriage door obsolete, their charming look has kept up throughout the centuries, influencing contemporary garage door design.

Modern carriage doors retain the elegance of their historical inspiration, generally featuring design details including vertical paneling, decorative strap hinges, and false windowpanes. However, while original carriage doors were engineered to swing open horizontally from a central point, most modern carriage-style doors aren't actually hinged to swing open at all. Instead, most are built as standard overhead doors that run on the same track as any other garage door, which means they come with the same automatic opener or remote-control convenience as whatever door you're replacing.

If you're considering replacing your garage door with this classier carriage style, you'll want to consider the various material options on the market, as these determine both appearance and upkeep. Your most budget-friendly option is likely a steel door with a textured composite overlay, which will hold up well with minimal maintenance. However, if you're willing to shell out for the most authentic version of the doors, you'll want to opt for a real wood, although these will require more regular maintenance to ensure they hold up against wind and water damage. A wood composite door splits the difference, pairing a real wood core with a protective composite shell that helps guard against the elements while keeping some of wood's authentic texture. If your garage shares a wall with a living space, it's also worth looking at insulation options, which are available for most carriage-style doors.

Another important thing to consider before committing is the reality that carriage doors do tend to be more expensive than a plain tilt-up door, largely because of the extra decorative details that give you that stylish, rustic look, which many homeowners consider a worthwhile investment. You'll also want to factor in installation costs, because we recommend hiring a professional– save the DIY for an impressive garage storage system. The addition of hardware, and, depending on your chosen door, heavier materials means your door's springs need to be properly sized to its actual weight, since a mismatch throws off the whole system's balance.