Los Angeles County
Wood garage doors for Spanish and Mediterranean houses in Los Angeles
A sectional door cannot follow an arched opening. The choice is a false arch built below the header or a curved top section made to your radius, and the two differ in cost and lead time.
The arch is the decision
Most Spanish and Mediterranean houses in Los Angeles carry an arch over the garage opening, and a sectional door cannot follow it. Sectional doors are rectangular sections on a straight vertical track that turns back under the header, so the top section has to meet a flat line. Curve the opening and a stock door has nothing to close against.
A false arch below the header
The opening is squared off. Stucco and trim close the crescent above the door line, and the door fits the rectangle underneath. Done properly, with the plaster texture matched and the arch line still reading, nobody looks twice. Standard sizes, standard track, normal lead time. You lose a few inches of height at the crown, which matters if you park something tall.
A curved top section on custom track
The top section is fabricated to the radius of your opening, and the track is made to carry a curved panel over. The door follows the arch. Made to measure means surveyed, drawn, built and delivered, so it takes longer than a stock size and it costs more. The arch has to be a true curve, and an opening shaped by hand that wanders will show the gap against a machine-cut edge.
Which one suits the house depends on the opening and the headroom above it. We measure first. What affects the price covers the rest. If the ceiling is tight or the drive falls away, read low headroom and hillside doors.
Plank faces, not stamped panels
A raised-panel steel door next to hand-troweled stucco looks borrowed from another house. What sits right is board: vertical planks with open joints, or board and batten, with enough depth in the seam to throw a shadow. A face with grain holds its own beside plaster. A flat pressed sheet does not.
Warm stain or painted
Stain keeps the grain visible and puts warmth against cream stucco, and it is the traditional answer. A west-facing frontage takes hard sun here, and a stained door there wants recoating sooner than one under a mature tree. Paint asks less and turns it into a color decision. A few shades darker than the wall reads as a deep shaded opening. The same cream as the stucco vanishes into it.
Iron, used as iron
On these houses iron is a working material: window grilles, railings, hinges, gate frames. On the door that means small-pane lights behind a grille, a grilled speakeasy opening, or hardware with weight in the hand. What fails is strap hardware screwed flat to a smooth face, imitating hinges on a door that does not swing. If a driveway gate stands on the same frontage, decide the ironwork for both at once.
Tudor and storybook
A different house, a related problem. Here the door wants dark cross-braced boards, small-pane lights across the upper section, and strap hardware. Straps are honest on a Tudor, because the original doors swung outward on long hinges and the ironwork is the language of the building. Let the bracing follow a pattern that would carry load, a Z or a V. Colors go deep: near-black, dark bronze, heavy green-brown. Storybook openings are often arched too, and the same two choices apply.
Seeing it on your own house
Photograph your frontage and generate a preview at see it on your house, then ask for a free estimate. New garage doors covers construction and insulation, and you can ask about financing. The free inspection and estimate is not conditional on buying anything. In a designated district, read historic district garage doors first.
If your current door is stuck or loud, that is a repair conversation first. Do not touch a broken torsion spring and do not try to lift a door that has come off its track. Both hold enough stored force to injure you badly. Leave it and call.
Where we work
Across Los Angeles County.
Planning a new door, or dealing with one that has stopped working?
See a new door on your own house before you commit to anything. Or tell us what the door is doing and we will come and look at it.