Garage doors work hard to protect your vehicles and other possessions from inclement weather, theft, and other issues. Despite this, a lot of garage doors are pretty boring. Many garage doors are made up of nothing more than single-color panels with no decoration at all. Others have basic windows, but that’s it. While decoration certainly isn’t essential to a garage door’s function, sprucing up the look of your garage door can make a big impact on the overall impression your house makes.
Fortunately, you don’t have to completely replace a garage door in order to spruce it up with some additional decoration. There are a number of decorative kits that you can add to your garage doors to completely revitalize their look. The kits are often low cost and easy to install, making them perfect for a DIY project over the weekend that will have a significant effect on the look of your home.
There are several options available when it comes to choosing garage door decorations. You can install handles and faux hinges, corner straps, knockers, latches, floor bolts, and more. If your garage door has windows, you can even install window grill coverings to help replicate the look of old carriage houses. You can even affix fake windows to the front of a windowless garage door, making it look like you have tinted or blacked out windows, with relatively little effort.
If you want to create an even more rustic look, imitation nail heads can be added which makes the garage door look like it was assembled using hand-forged nails. There are also a variety of other decorations including shapes and figures that customize the look of your garage door. All of these options exist to help ensure that the look of your garage door matches with your own personal preferences.
Depending on the type of kit that you buy, there are a few different options for installing the decorative pieces. In the event of imitation nail heads, many of these come attached to small pins so that you can simply press the nail head into the garage door material where you wish it to go. Screw-mounted decorative hardware requires a bit more work, as you’ll need to drill holes in the garage door to start the screws before attaching the handles or other hardware. Once the pieces are attached, though, they’re pretty firmly in place on your garage door.
For those who don’t want to make permanent changes to the garage door, a lot of decorative kits are available in magnetic forms as well. While these only work on metal garage doors, the installation is much simpler as you only need to place the decorative bits where you want them to be, and the magnets will hold them in place with no additional work. While the magnets are generally strong enough to hold your decorations in place without issue during normal garage door function, it’s important to keep in mind that they won’t hold against the hardware being pulled on or otherwise forcefully moved.
In some cases, you may decide that you want to upgrade your garage door and add decorative pieces at the same time. If using screw-on additions, you can often get the garage door installer to add the pieces before mounting the new door. Magnetic or push-pin accents are easy to add after the new door is installed, and you can either get the installer to add these accents or do it yourself after the fact.
If you are getting a new garage door installed, it’s important to find an installer that you can trust. Fortunately, HomeKeepr can help you with this. Once you sign up for a HomeKeepr account you can connect with garage door installers and other pros in your area directly from the HomeKeepr app. Best of all, it’s free to sign up. Join today and you’ll be one step closer to the garage doors of your dreams.