Tips for Painting Your Garage Door

4 Materials
$60
1 Hour
Medium

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If you’ve been following along, you know that we’ve been working on giving the exterior of our home a little face lift with a brand new paint job. After we got the new exterior paint on the house and finished the trim, the old dingy garage door stuck out like a sore thumb.


Even though we washed layers of dirt and grime off of the garage door with a pressure washer, it was still riddled with years of yuck that was never going to come off.

9 TIPS FOR PAINTING GARAGE DOOR:


  • Be sure to give your garage door a nice cleaning before starting to paint. We used a pressure washer to clean the entire exterior of our home before we start painting. If you don’t have a pressure washer handy, you can give your garage door a good scrubbing with soap and water before painting garage door.
  • Choose a warm day when painting garage door. It’s best to paint on an overcast day if possible. Avoid painting garage door in direct sunlight.
  • Use a 4 inch roller make it easier to paint in the smaller nooks of the panels of the garage door.
  • Put a grid in the paint bucket. This allows you to get more paint on roller, so you can work faster.
  • I recommend using a high quality exterior paint, like the Behr Marquee line, which required only one coat of paint for us. A high quality paint will also be more resistant to fading and stains. We also didn’t need to use a primer because the Marquee line is a paint + primer.
  • If you’re only painting garage door, a quart should be enough paint if you’re using a high quality line that requires one coat. When in doubt, one gallon of paint will be more than enough.
  • We painted the trim the same color as the door, so we didn’t have to worry about this. But if you are going to paint the garage door trim a different color, paint the trim first and let it dry fully. Next, use painters tape to cover the trim before painting garage door.
  • Lay down a drop cloth below you while painting garage door to protect driveway from any spills or splatters.
  • Open up the garage door shortly after painting. This will help the panels not stick together as they dry. Leave the garage door open while it dries.


Are you ready to see our garaged door transformation??

What a crazy difference, right?!


Hop on over to this post to see more before and after pictures and learn more about our garage painting experience.

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3 of 11 questions
  • Florence Arras Florence Arras on Jan 22, 2018

    Would this work on fiberglass garage doors? If not what could I do to make them look better.

  • Brenda Jerrett Brenda Jerrett on Jan 29, 2018

    I need to paint our garage doors this year but it looks like they're painted with gloss paint and I would like to paint with behr eggshell. How hard is it going to be to get paint to adhere to the gloss?

  • Linda R Linda R on Feb 09, 2019

    Our garage door is an original cream colored fiberglass one from 1974. It's the kind of fiberglass where you can actually SEE the fibers. It's standard sized single door and when I washed it with soapy water and a brush, fibers came off along with the dirt in the rinse water. It isn't like I punched a hole through it, but it made me think

    Like maybe I should use a sealer first before painting? That is, besides a primer. Otherwise I think more of the fibers would come off and that would make the paint look all lumpy and get in the paint and the brush and whatever else.

    Do you think I should use a sealer? If so, what kind of sealer wis the right thing to use on that? Also, what kind of paint would be best? I already have Kilz primer so that's on hand. But, when I ask the guys at the local HD, I've gotten every type of answer, from "I'm not sure," to "use acrylic," to "it's gotta be oil-based". I'm so confused.

    What do you guys think? After all, you are the actual pros who've either done it or have at least seen it done. So I know I won't be getting 'second-hand info' from you folks.

    Thanks a bunch.

    I'm really in a jam here trying to sort the truth out from the fiction on this one. Everyone I ask seems to know all about it, the "it" being "nothing". Oh, boy!

    I'm out of my league and could really use your help. Thanks again!

    L Rudolph

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  • Becky Becky on Jan 14, 2018

    very nice job -- looks great!!

  • Vanessa Heavens Vanessa Heavens on Jun 17, 2021

    Gorgeous refresh! The bright white really makes the house pop. This seems pretty achievable for what I want to do - thanks for sharing.

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