Customising A Garage Door

Natural lighting can make a huge difference in any home. We often use a smart combination of windows and positioning in order to maximize the amount of sunlight that a room receives, however this is very dependant on the layout and orientation of your house, as well as any surrounding features.

Orientation of Natural Light

The quality of your natural lighting will often depend on where your garage doors are facing. If your garage faces north, then it will often experience much darker light with neutral tones. The colour is a lot more consistent than direct sunlight, but it will appear a bit colder in hue.

South-facing garages, on the other hand, will be the brightest of all orientations. This makes them very sunlight dominant especially towards the late morning to mid-afternoon. These spaces have consistent sunlight most of the day, but with much warmer tones than north-facing rooms.

East-facing rooms are brightest in the morning but also dark in the evenings. The morning lights are usually a very yellow tone which can tend to make a room look very washed out. In contrast, west-facing rooms are strongest in the afternoon and you’ll often get a very rich orange sunlight hue. It can often be overwhelming but there are ways to counteract this warm light balance by adding cooler tones in the room.

As you can see, orientation provides different levels of natural light in your garage and if it’s something that you can choose or modify, we wholly recommend keeping these points in consideration.

Choosing the Right Door

Most garage doors are solid slabs that don’t do a great job of letting sunlight in. As a result, if you want to naturally light your garage, it’s a good idea to pick a different door that has larger windows that will allow sunlight to permeate your room. There are often two options when it comes to adding windows to your garage door; you can either replacing your entire garage door or add glass panels to it.

Adding panels will require some DIY skills or by contacting a contractor or a specialist to help you. It’s very possible to do it yourself by drilling and cutting into the garage door, but this will require some serious tools and you could end up damaging the door if you’re not careful. On the other hand, it’s also possible to speak to a speak to a contractor and ask them to help you do this for you.

The last option is to simply purchase a different garage door. Luckily, garage doors do follow standards so they’re relatively easy to install if you do want to replace them.

Summary

Garage doors are typically very solid and plain pieces of metal that block all sunlight. While this can be great to prevent your car inside from being faded, it does look a bit strange when you enter the garage and having some natural sunlight in your garage will make the room look much more complete. However, the way you approach it and the orientation of your garage door will make a huge difference to your project.