How Big Should A Garage Door Opening Be

A very common question to garage door dealers is what size should i make the garage door rough opening.

How big should a garage door opening be.

Pull a measurement from the floor of your space to the ceiling next to the door opening. Next you will need to know your door height. Standard garage doors in our area are 8 9 16 and 18 wide. 99 of the residential garage doors that we run across are different than these widths.

Sides of garage door opening. Getting the rough opening size right the first time will save you from frustration when installing your doors. If there isn t enough room above the opening this can t be done without raising the roof of the garage. Ideally there should be a space of at least 5inches on each side of the door.

Framing rough opening sizes are really quite simple. Cut two 2 x 6 pieces of lumber and attach to the face of the wall running from the edge of your garage door jambs to the ceiling of your garage. You should add 2 1 2 to the height of the actual door. In short the minimum dimensions for a 2 car garage should be 20 x20 and to make extra space to get in and out of the car it is recommended to go with 24 x24 or larger.

If you use a garage door opener for your opener it will be attached to this piece as well. Just add 2 to the width of the actual door size. 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. The single 16 foot wide 4 9 meter wide garage door is large enough to allow two cars to fit.

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. It holds the garage door torsion springs which means any force exerted on the springs is directly transferred to this piece. This lumber will be used to attach your garage door track and a portion of your assembly. When you open the car doors inside the minimum sized 20x20 garage you might just end up scratching the car door when you re in a hurry to get in and out.

This will give you room to space the door frame off of the sub floor. It is also a good idea to have a 3 foot wide door to the exterior on the side of the garage. In most cases the answer would be that you want to make the opening the same size as the door and that is the stock answer you will usually get. 1 2 or 1 in one direction of the other will won t typically cause you to have to shop for a non standard garage door size.