If you’re considering a new garage door, you may be wondering about what wood garage doors can offer you. Nothing beautifies your home quite like a wood garage door, but everything has its advantages and disadvantages. Here’s what you need to know about the pros and cons of wood garage doors so that you can determine if they are right for you.
Pros
Wood garage doors can be an excellent choice for your home. They have quite a few advantages. Here are some of the many benefits that these doors can offer you.
Aesthetic Appeal
Wood garage doors are preferable to other materials because they are stunning. Wood offers a unique, beautiful look to your home, and that can be enhanced with staining. Wood is one of the original materials for garage doors, giving a traditional, stately aesthetic to your home.
Customizable
Wood conjures a sense of class, but if you want a more modern look to your garage doors, the good news is that wood garage doors are very customizable. There’s a wide range of woods you can choose from that all have their own unique looks, from spruce, pine, fir, redwood, hemlock, cedar, and more.
The design of the door itself can be suited to your home, with a wide variety of styles to choose from. You can opt for a barn-style door, trifold, bifold, swing, traditional, rail, and more. You can add hardware accents too like handles, studs, knockers, and more, if you like, to make your door truly yours.
Another way that wood garage doors can be customized is through their finish. You can choose from a stain to enhance the wood’s natural beauty or a paint to change the color to whatever you desire.
As wood is a very versatile material, wood garage doors aren’t restricted to certain sizes of garages. They can be built to fit your garage door opening.
As you see, wood garage doors are extremely versatile and beautiful. But those aren’t their only advantages.
Durable
Wood garage doors are durable. They’re typically resistant to damage. They don’t rust like steel garage doors do, and they are generally fairly impact resistant, meaning they don’t dent as easily as other kinds of garage doors. They won’t crack from being hit by balls people throw around. They are tough and can withstand a lot.
Repairs 
These garage doors are fairly easy to repair. They can easily be repainted or re-stained, and if they sustain damage, the damaged portion or panel of the door can simply be replaced with another.
Cons
Nothing is perfect. Like every other kind of garage door, wood garage doors have their disadvantages too.
Maintenance
Wood does offer a measure of insulation against the elements, but of all the options for garage door materials, wood garage doors are not the best choice when it comes to insulation. Other materials such as steel can be insulated to their core, but wood is a solid material, which means it cannot be as insulated as other materials.
Some more recent types of wood garage doors do have options to be able to add insulation, but these are not solid wood. The kinds of wood garage doors that offer more insulation tend to have wood overlay instead.
Wood garage doors require a lot of maintenance. They need frequent repairing or refinishing, and are at risk for warping and splitting because they can shrink and expand without maintenance. This makes them both somewhat inconvenient with needing regular repainting and staining and more expensive to maintain, since they need it more than other types of garage doors.
Wood garage doors also fall victim to bugs, which necessitates regular treatment in order to ward off termites and other bugs that can damage them. They need weathercoating, too, to protect them from rotting and water damage.
Insulation
Wood does offer a measure of insulation against the elements, but of all the options for garage door materials, wood garage doors are not the best choice when it comes to insulation. Other materials such as steel can be insulated to their core, but wood is a solid material, which means it cannot be as insulated as other materials.
Some more recent types of wood garage doors do have options to be able to add insulation, but these are not solid wood. The kinds of wood garage doors that offer more insulation tend to have wood overlay instead.
Heavy
These kinds of garage doors are heavy, which means they need a system that can handle their weight in order to assure smooth operation. This means that if you don’t already have a system that can handle their weight, you’ll need to get heavy-duty springs and a heavy-duty door opener too, so that your wood garage door stays balanced and can open and close with ease.
Are You Considering A Wood Garage Door?
If you’re considering a wood garage door, our experts here at Advanced Door can walk you through their pros and cons and help you decide if they’re a good option for you. We offer custom wood garage doors that can suit your vision. If you would like to learn more about wood garage doors or if you have any questions about any of our garage door services, please feel free to contact us at Advanced Door today!