Garage door prices

What a garage door costs fitted

A garage door is priced as a fitted job, not just as a door by itself. The door itself, the tracks and springs that carry it, taking the old one out, and the motor if you want it automated are all part of the same number, and changing any one of them changes the total.

What decides the price

• The type. A sectional door that folds up into the roof, a roll-up door that winds into a drum, and a tip-up door that swings out as one panel are three different products at three different prices.
• The size. A single and a double are the obvious split, but an opening that is not a standard size is a bigger difference than most people expect, because the door has to be made for it.
• The material and finish. Steel, aluminium, fibreglass or timber, plain or in a finish. Timber is the heaviest and longest lasting, while also changing the motor you need.
• What comes out. Removing and disposing of the old door, and whether the existing frame and tracks can be reused or have to be replaced.
• Automation. A motor fitted at the same time as the door, a motor added to a door you already have, or no motor at all. See garage door motors.

Where the price is set

The price for the door, door hardware and motor to automate are all set by their manufacturers rather than by us directly. The door maker and the operator maker each publish a list, each carries a recommended retail figure against every item on it, and each revises that list when their own input costs shift, which in a bad year happens twice rather than once.

What differs is how the two lists are organised. An operator is a model: one line, one figure. A door is a matrix of type, size, material and finish, so a standard single in Chromadek has a line of its own while a wide double in timber sits somewhere else entirely, and an opening that is not a standard size is made to order and priced accordingly.

Where any installer lands against either list depends on who they buy through and how long that account has run. That is why the same door and the same operator can turn up in two quotes at two different numbers without either being dishonest.

We push both sides down as far as they will go, and there is a practical reason beyond the obvious one. A door and its motor get chosen in the same conversation, which means they get compromised in the same conversation. When the budget pinches, what gives is panel gauge or motor pull, and both come back to bite.

What happens when the specification gets shaved

Start with how a garage door actually works, because it is not what most people picture. The door does not hang from the motor. It hangs in balance, on springs wound to match its weight, and the operator only ever handles the difference between the two. Everything below follows from that.

Thin the panel and the door flexes. A flexing door stops sitting square in its tracks, catches at the edges, and now the springs are counterbalancing something that no longer behaves like the door they were wound for. Whatever they no longer hold, the motor carries.

Undersize the operator instead and you arrive at the same place from the other direction. A motor running at the ceiling of its pull copes through summer and struggles on the first cold morning, which is usually when the owner first notices. After that it is intermittent, and after that it is a gearbox.

Neither of those announces itself at handover. They turn up a year or two later as call-outs, and the second visit generally costs more than the original saving did.

There is a safety edge to this too. Springs holding that much stored energy are unforgiving, and a door running out of true loads them in ways nobody designed for. It is a poor place to discover you economised.

Getting a quote for your opening

No two openings are alike, so the only figure worth having is the one for yours. Send through the width and the height, plus a photograph taken from far enough back that we can see the door, the frame and the space above it. That headroom is the detail that settles whether a sectional door is even an option.

What comes back is itemised: the door, the fitting, taking the old one away, and the operator if you want one, each on its own line rather than buried in a single total. The equipment is guaranteed and so is our work.

If the door itself is sound and the trouble is that it sticks, drops or refuses to stay up, you want garage door repairs rather than this page. Springs, tracks and rollers are a repair, not a replacement.

To see what we fit, see garage doors and automation.