A Garage Door's Impact

It's often been said, most of the time by me, that a new garage door or an update to your garage door can greatly influence your home despite the small relative price it may cost. This of course makes the investment in your garage door a very safe one when looking at what you can do to up the value of your home in a short period of time with a small amount of money. You may not be convinced of all that yet though. What makes a garage door more impactful to your home's look than something like new landscaping or new shingles for your roof? The short answer is "a variety of things, but not necessarily the same things" the long answer will take up the remaining portion of this article.

Garage doors are a great investment for your home because above all they are very visible. There is a reason that curb appeal is one of the most popular terms in real estate and that is because the view of your home from the curb or the picture that is taken of your home when it is listed is going to be the first thing buyers look at. Whether they are looking at homes at the real estate office, flipping though a local flyer or looking at pictures online the first picture will inevitably be that shot from the lawn or street of your home on a nice day. From the street there are typically a number of things that you can see depending on the landscaping, size of the house, and layout. One of the most commonly visible things in these pictures is a big garage door. It is generally on the front of the house and because of how garages are used they typically won't be covered up by things like landscaping or similar features that can obscure the rest of a home. The placement of your driveway most likely will coincide with your garage door which allows for an unobstructed view from the street for obvious reasons. What this means is that for most home owners, even those with tremendous amounts of landscaping or overgrowth, the garage and garage door still make it into this picture.

Another reason that the garage door is often seen as having a large impact on your home's look is because typically your home's exterior is boring. Many homes start to look the same after a while, especially if they were built in the same area around the same time. This means that they all start to blur together and the only real defining characteristics of them are things like landscaping, the color of the door, number of windows and of course the garage door. Things like painting your home's door is an easy thing to do to update your home, but fixing up the others will most likely cost a bit of money and landscaping take a fair amount of time to really pay off aesthetically for the most part. This is why garage doors are such a great candidate for improvement, they are a very large part of your home's view from the street and also break up the monotony of a house that may be all vinyl siding or all brick save for a few windows. Your garage door may not make up half of your home's view from the street or in a picture, but it does take up a significant portion and is much more easily changed than the other portions of your home like the siding or windows.

As buyers or simply neighbors passing by your house for the first time there is a great deal of judgement that occurs before we even really realize it. We look at things and make a great deal of our decisions subconsciously within seconds of coming into contact with something new and a new home is no different. All of the visible properties of your home are immediately a part of this decision for a potential buyer or house guest and so the garage door plays a large part in this decision despite having a very defined actual impact on the home's worth and usage. This means that while your garage door update may cost very little and actually not even mentioned when listing your home it has a huge impact in the eyes of buyers when they first take a look at your place. If you aren't selling your home and are just looking to improve your home's outer appearance the garage door is still a great spot to start because of these first seconds that people appraise your home's exterior in.

Your garage door is probably pretty big and makes up a fair portion of your home's view from places like the street or the front lawn. This makes it a great candidate for a cheap revamp that will stretch your dollar further than you expect. A new garage door that complements your home is a great way for people to look at your home in a new and better light. You could of course paint your home or put in loads of new beautiful plants in order to make your home look better, but these all take far more time and money than a new garage door when you look at the impact on your home's look. The garage door is one of the best investments you can make because they are typically unobstructed from view, they can show a bit of style and personality to anybody looking at them and because they take up such a large space when they are first looked at. If you are looking to sell your home talk to your real estate agent about what they think about a garage door update and they will most likely be all aboard for the idea. If you are just looking to update your home for yourself then take a look at some garage doors and think about the impact they would make on your home's appearance in your mind. If you just are itching to check out some new garage door possibilities for your home get in touch with your local garage door professional and ask them what they think or what ideas they might have for your new garage door.