What Size Is a Standard Garage Door in Australia?

Garage door sizes in Australia are less standard than the word suggests. Every maker publishes a table of common sizes, and nearly all of them will build outside it to order, so a standard size is really the range that fits the openings builders have been leaving for the last few decades. This guide gives the typical widths and heights for single and double doors, the usual roller door sizes, what each door type needs around the opening and, more useful than any chart, how to measure your own garage. Treat every figure here as a common range rather than a spec, and confirm the final size with the maker or installer before ordering.

What sizes do garage doors come in?

Residential doors split into singles, for one car, and doubles, for two cars side by side. Each comes as a roller door, a sectional door or a tilt door, and all three types cover roughly the same spread of widths and heights, though the maximums differ. Beyond that are the odd sizes: narrow doors for a lane-way garage, low doors under a first-floor balcony, tall doors for a caravan bay, and the wide shed and workshop doors that sit between residential and commercial ranges.

Two things make sizes drift. The first is the age of the house. Older brick-and-tile homes in suburbs like Morley, Midland and Armadale were built for smaller cars and often have narrower, lower openings, sometimes with a tilt door the opening was built around. The second is the maker. Steel-Line, B&D and Centurion Garage Doors each publish their own size steps for each door series, and those steps do not line up exactly between brands. So when you read a figure on this page, read it as commonly around that size, and check the maker's current table for the door you are actually considering.

What is a standard single garage door size?

A single garage door size in Australia is typically around 2.4 to 2.7 metres wide, with some makers listing single sizes closer to 3 metres for people who want room to open the car doors. Height is commonly around 2.1 to 2.4 metres, and the lower end of that range is what most older Perth garages have. Newer homes have been trending towards the wider and taller end of both ranges, mostly because the cars have grown.

With an old single opening, the useful question is what will fit and what you actually need. A door on the narrow end of the range is fine for a hatchback and tight for a dual-cab ute with the mirrors out. If the opening cannot be widened, a door that fills every millimetre of it, with the guides or tracks as close to the reveal as the maker allows, gets you the most usable width.

What is a standard double garage door width?

A double garage door width is commonly around 4.8 to 5.4 metres, and heights follow the same range as single doors, typically around 2.1 to 2.4 metres. Most of the 1990s and 2000s estate homes in Ellenbrook, Canning Vale and Joondalup have a double opening in this band, so a door of that era is probably a common size and straightforward to replace like for like. Some makers offer wider doubles again for three-car garages.

Keep two things in mind with doubles. A double door weighs a lot more than a single, so the spring set and the opener are sized to the door, not just the opening; the wider and taller you go, the heavier the hardware behind it. And there is a difference between a double door and two singles with a brick pier in between. Two singles cost more and take two openers, but each door is lighter, one can fail without stranding both cars, and the pier carries a share of the wall above.

What are common roller door sizes for garages and sheds?

Roller door sizes run in a wider spread than sectional doors because the curtain is cut from a continuous coil of steel. Makers list widths in steps across the residential range, commonly from small single sizes up to double widths a little over 5 metres, with heights typically up to around 3 metres before you move into the heavier commercial and industrial series. B&D's Roll-A-Door, the Steel-Line roller ranges and Centurion's roller doors each have a published size table, and each one is slightly different.

For sheds the range starts small. Garden and workshop sheds commonly take a roller door from roughly 1.5 metres wide upward, at heights that suit a person or a ride-on mower rather than a car, and the maker builds the curtain to the shed opening. Larger farm and machinery sheds go the other way, with doors well past residential sizes in a heavier curtain profile, usually with a chain or motor drive. Whatever the size, the curtain is made wider than the clear opening so it sits inside the guides, and the maker adds that allowance; you give them the opening size, not a curtain size. The roller door installation process, including removal of the old door, covers how the drum, guides and motor are fitted once the size is settled.

Do sectional, tilt and roller doors need different openings for the same door width?

Yes. The opening width and height can be identical, but what each door type needs above, beside and behind the opening is quite different, and this is where most sizing mistakes happen.

• Roller doors need headroom above the lintel for the rolled-up curtain, and the taller the door the fatter the roll, so a high door needs more headroom than a low one. They also need side room each side for the guide tracks and the drum brackets, with a little more on the motor side. They need nothing along the ceiling, which is why they suit garages with storage overhead.
• Sectional doors need headroom for the curve of the tracks and the spring shaft above the opening, side room each side for the vertical tracks, and a clear run of ceiling back into the garage roughly the height of the door plus extra for the horizontal tracks and the opener rail. Low-headroom track kits exist for tight lintels and change the numbers, so ask.
• Tilt doors need headroom for the pivot hardware and clear space in front of the opening, because the bottom of the door swings outward as it lifts. A car parked hard against a tilt door stops it opening, and the arc has to clear the driveway slope as well.

The exact clearances vary by maker, door series, spring type and whether a motor is fitted, so use the installation drawings for the specific door rather than a rule of thumb. If you are still choosing between the two common types, our roller door versus sectional door comparison sets out the headroom and ceiling differences in plain terms.

How do you measure your opening before ordering a new door?

Use a steel tape, work in millimetres, and write everything down with a sketch. Measure the finished opening, brick to brick or frame to frame, and do not take anything off for clearances; the maker builds in their own allowances and expects opening sizes from you.

1. Width: measure across the opening at the bottom, the middle and the top. Record all three and use the smallest; brick openings are rarely square.
2. Height: measure from the finished floor to the underside of the lintel at the left, centre and right. Again, keep the smallest, and note if the floor slopes across the opening.
3. Headroom: measure from the underside of the lintel straight up to the lowest thing above it, which may be the ceiling, a beam, a light fitting, a pipe or the existing roller door drum. This number decides which door types and track kits are possible.
4. Side room: measure from each edge of the opening sideways to the nearest wall, pipe, meter box or downpipe. Do the left and the right separately, because they are often different.
5. Depth: measure from the opening back into the garage along the ceiling to the first obstruction, a beam, a storage rack or a rear wall. Sectional doors and their openers need this room.
6. Note where the power point is, where the internal door and any windows sit, and whether the opening face is flush brick, render or has a timber frame around it.

If you would rather not do any of this, we measure the opening and supply the door to suit anywhere in Perth, with the measure and quote free and the price agreed in writing before the door is ordered.

What happens if your opening is a non-standard or custom size?

Usually nothing dramatic. Because the major makers build to order, an opening a few hundred millimetres off a listed size simply gets a door made to that size, within the limits of the door series. It gets more involved at the edges of those limits and around the space beside the opening.

• Very wide openings may need a heavier curtain or panel gauge, extra bracing, a higher wind rating on exposed coastal sites, and an opener rated for the extra weight.
• Very little headroom usually means a low-headroom sectional track kit, a roller door with the drum housed in a pelmet outside the opening, or a tilt door, in that order of preference.
• Openings that are too large can be built in with a steel or timber frame and cladding to bring them down to a common size; openings that are too small can sometimes be cut out, which involves the lintel and needs building advice before anyone picks up a saw.
• A floor that slopes across the opening is handled with a bottom seal that takes up the difference, or with a threshold if the fall is large.
• Swapping an old tilt door for a sectional or roller door is usually possible, but the headroom and side room the tilt door never needed have to be checked first.

Non-standard also covers doors of ordinary size built to match the house, in cedar, aluminium slats or timber-look panels on a sectional or tilt frame. The custom garage doors we build for unusual openings and facades start with exactly the same measurements as a plain steel door.

What size door suits an SUV, 4WD or a high-roof vehicle?

Measure the vehicle before you measure the door. Take its height with everything that lives on the roof, racks, bars, a pod or a roof-top tent, and its width mirror to mirror. Large SUVs and dual-cab utes are commonly around 2 metres wide across the body and wider still with the mirrors out, and a lifted 4WD with a roof rack or a high-roof van can be well over 2 metres tall. Against that, a door at the common 2.1 metre height leaves very little in hand, and a taller door, commonly around 2.4 metres, is the comfortable choice for a tall vehicle.

Two details catch people out. The clear height under an open door is less than the opening height, because a sectional door hangs a little below the lintel when it is up and an opener rail sits below the ceiling, so ask the maker for the drive-through height of the door in the open position rather than the opening size. And width is about the mirrors, not just the body; a narrow single will take a wide ute with the mirrors folded, but nobody wants to do that twice a day. If the garage is being built or the opening rebuilt, go to the wider and taller end of the common ranges now, because it is very hard to add later.

Once the size is settled, the next decision is what the door looks like from the street. Our guide to choosing a Colorbond colour for a garage door covers how colour behaves in the Perth sun and how to match it to the roof and trim.