A garage door can be a big part—up to 30 percent—of the front exterior of your home. All major companies offer numerous options to add a bit of style to a standard door.
You can choose a basic frame-and-panel design or elaborate, sculpted segments. If you own a contemporary home, you might consider a door with bands of horizontal ribbing, or a non-textured flush door design. Generally, the color palette for garage doors is limited to white, beige and brown. However, many garage door companies are now offering a variety of pre-made color selections. If you're truly picky when it comes to color, painting your metal door—or painting or staining a wood one—is an option.
Windows, available as snap-in or screw-in units, come in a wide variety of styles, from basic rectangular lights to multipanel sunburst patterns. For the privacy-conscious, "etched" or colored panes admit light but don't allow a clear view of the garage interior. You'll have to do some prioritizing when deciding on a window material: Acrylic panes are less likely to shatter under impact, but they lack the thermal benefits that laminated glass offers.
If the above options don't fulfill your appetite for individualism, think about investing in a custom door. Many companies hand-build carriage-type doors of any style that appear to slide, fold or swing outward but actually roll up overhead, allowing them to be used in conjunction with an automatic opener. Wayne-Dalton also makes a carriage-house door that swings up to open.