Finished Garage Door Opening Size

Many home builders do not consider this a structural necessity but a style and price choice for the homeowner.

Finished garage door opening size.

This post is intended for purposes of clarifying how garage door sizes work and opening preparation. Framing rough opening sizes are really quite simple. While technically the door could overlap the opening as much as the space will allow the design on the outside of the door disappearing behind the jamb will tend to distract from the overall outside. If there isn t enough room above the opening this can t be done without raising the roof of the garage.

Frame the rough opening for the garage door to 3 inches wider than the garage door you have selected. This will give you room to space the door frame off of the sub floor. Many homeowners have two cars and need garage space to shelter them both. 1 2 or 1 in one direction of the other will won t typically.

99 of the residential garage doors that we run across are different than these widths. How to frame a garage door 1. The size of the finished opening should be the exact same size as the sectional garage door or down to 1 smaller on each side and or the top. Many 16 x 7 garage doors will be designed with a pair of single 8 foot garage door bays separated by a central post or column.

In our business we refer to rough openings as the size of the opening before the finished lumber has been added to the jambs. The doors extend beyond the finished trim you see from the front a fact that must be taken into consideration when framing and preparing the area for installation. You should add 2 1 2 to the height of the actual door. Once again it should be obvious that if you have an arched opening the height would be the same as the highest point of the arch.

Just add 2 to the width of the actual door size. Measure the distance from the bottom plate of the wall to a point that is 1 1 2 inches higher that the garage door height. Width of garage door opening standard widths are 8 9 10 12 14 16 17 and 18 height of the garage door opening standard residential heights are 7 7 6 8 header the header is ideally a minimum 12 wide micro laminated beam that spans the width of the garage door opening. Words like rough opening are thrown around and i m not sure if we are speaking about the same thing.

The span above the door opening is framed with a long header that supports the wall area above the door and this header will need to be raised or rebuilt in order to increase the overall door size. Standard sizes standard garage doors in our area are 8 9 16 and 18 wide. This way the door will have a nice tight seal once the weatherseal or door stop molding is applied. Cut four 2 x 4 trimmers to this length and nail two each to either side of the rough.

The rough opening is equal to the size of the door but you need to figure back head and side room before choosing and installing the new garage door. As i stated earlier you will want the finished opening to be the same size or slightly smaller than the door. The standard size for double garage doors is 16 feet wide and 7 to 8 feet high.