Too shallow. A full size pickup or SUV is something like 21'6". Also; 466 square feet is NOT large, particularly if you're storing mowers and such in there. Make sure the doors are high enough, too. When I built homes, the MINIMUM we'd do on a garage is 24' in depth.

As a point of reference our 25' garage seemed extra deep until we got... the SUBURBAN. Now it is just right. I can get around front and back and open the 'barn' doors even with a storage cabinet in front and the garage door closed. You may not have such a huge, non PC, vehicle but there are some who do. We also have a ski boat which will fit inside including the trailer tongue. Neither of these would have fit in our old garage. At this point it would take alot of talking to get my husband to go for any smaller garage than what we currently have no matter how much I liked the house. So for function and resale I think it is a good idea to go deeper if you can for sure and perhaps do an oversized double if you can't go out in both directions. Most 2 car garages are really only 1 car in effect so a 'modest' 3 car would likely only fit 2 anyway. Perhaps the savings in making it a 2 car would offset the additional size of the garage as well.

The only way to know is with scaled graph paper. Draw the garage, all its doors, all your planned storage areas within it and their door swings (if you have closeted storage areas) and your cars. Go open your car doors and measure how much space you need to get in and out with your bundles and precious bundles of joy (if any). Now, draw the cars and the clearances onto your garage design. Do you want your head and rear end covered when you pull groceries out of the trunk? Add that on. If you come up with less than 24 feet of depth, recalculate.

Next, try to anticipate any future vehicles you might own.

Don't be concerned about what other people do or suggest. What do YOU need? Add 2 feet all around for errors of measurement or judgment. This is one of the cheaper spaces you'll build, so size up if in doubt!

I would never have a garage less than 30' in depth. With any type of cabinet storage or benches (or an extra refrigerator or freezer etc.) on the back wall, you'll need that extra depth if you want to be able to walk around your vehicle after parking it. Regardless of having a "shop" area, the garage always tends to accumulate and need storage like this so it's best to plan for it up front. And, if you are at all interested in working on your own vehicles (even just a simple oil change) or have a hobby that involves some home working on something that wont fit into the shop (boats, motorcycles, ATVs), that extra depth for tool storage and a bench is critical.

Everyone seems to agree that "deeper is better, wider is better, bigger is better" --
but sometimes the tradeoff is too problematic, and I'm guessing that's where the OP is coming from.

What's really the minimum depth? Width? Will 29' work for three vehicles?
What if one of them is a Suburban?

The reason I'm asking is that for our planned 3-car garage, the trade-offs would be either:
- front entry (which I don't like the look of, especially with 3 bays)
- losing 1, possibly 2 large trees in the back yard (by large, I mean trunk diameter of 30")
- trying for a zoning variance to trade keeping the trees for front encroachment (unlikely to be granted)
- settling for a 2-car garage (but we have 3 vehicles and a 3-car garage will be much better for both resale and what we want to do with the space above)

So what's the minimum size for a 3-car garage?

I wouldn't consider that to be a 3 car garage. It's only 595 sf. Our two car is 676 square feet (26x26).

I would go deeper, to at least 24" (MINIMUM, more if you have a long truck or SUV). And wider as well. It will be tight to get 3 doors on 29'.

To figure our the miniumum width you need, I would park your vehicles side by side so that the doors can all be open without hitting each other. Then measure the width from the outer door on the first vehicle to the outer door on the 3rd vehicle. Add 2 feet. Or just measure the width (with doors open) of your widest vehicle, multiple by three, and add two feet.

Sweeby: Like sue36 said, you really need to measure. Also, how wide do you want your garage doors to be? A single and double? Three singles? How much space do you want between them? Do you want passengers to be able to exit inside the garage--or are you happy for them to hop out before you pull inside? It all depends; there is no standard.

We want to open our car doors fully; we have 2 Toyota sedans. Our garage is 32 feet exterior measurement, 31 feet some inches interior measurement. It's none too wide. It's 28 feet deep. It's none too deep. Unless you never put anything in there except cars.

In retrospect, it was probably silly to ask this question. I've done the exercise that bj_inatlanta suggests to scale in Visio. I've measured our current vehicles and paced and paced around them in our current "tiny" garage. I knew in my heart that people would respond that it is too small. Garage space is so important these days. (I was hoping for the opposite, but that was childish). Honestly trying not to sound bitter, I'm just a bit disappointed today.

Sweeby is right on with his/her observation. (Sorry i can't guess gender). There are a lot of problems with making the garage larger. Making it wider isn't an issue (except monetarily, of course). However, making it deeper would pull the entire front of the house out, increasing the square footage (and therefor cost to build) even further. We could steal some area from our master closet and laundry room, but I'm not sure which I value more. I guess the trap I'm trying not to fall into is the constant expansion of the home. We began this project many moons ago with the goal to build a home just big enough for us with a beautiful level of finish. Now I just have to figure out where my priorities lie.

Thanks to everyone for the input. I think I'll go stew in my garage for a few more hours. :)

jaymielo,

Just so you do not feel bad, we will not even have a garage until well after our house is done. I do not think it is "so important". What matters is where your priorities lie, not what everyone else needs.

I know in my neck of the woods, the majority of folks do not park their vehicles in a garage. Garages are either turned into workshops, storage (including atvÂs), or living space. We will try to swing a carport, but it is way down at the bottom of the list of things we want. Eventually I would like a nice detached garage, but that can come much later.

What about making it a large 2 car garage, with the 29' being the depth and 20.5' being the width?

Even a Suburban is only 219.2" long, so it should fit into an 18'6" garage. Like a hand in a glove. But if you're driving a Smart car, you can do donuts in the same space.
{{gwi:1449484}}

Can you squeeze me in?

Our 2 car garage is 19'8 x 19'5. I have been assured that this is big enough for our Ford contour and Ford F-150 pickup truck. A garage is not a big priority for us because my hubby will have 13 x 13 workshop in the back to store his mower and tools. I know it will be tight in there but I don't really care. We are going from no garage to this one so it seems spectacular to me. :)

My garage is 21'2" X 32'.

I have a Suburban and it fits--barely. I wish our garage was deeper.

I've never seen one that was too big. Our new one is 27 ft deep and 37 ft wide, 10 ft ceilings, one 10 ft and one 18 ft door (both 8 ft high) AND wish it was bigger. BTW the house itself is only 1,720 sf.

Frankly, yes: too small. You want enough space to get groceries in and out of the back of the car with the garage doors shut, enough space at the front to open the hood and apply jumper cables if needed.

If you don't need the space now, put in some shelves: they'll fill up before you know it, and can be removed if you [or the next owner] gets a larger car.

An extra four feet will make life easier, and cost almost nothing in comparison to the rest of the house.

I knoow you've had alot of replys but maybe what we didi will help you to visualize... We drew the garage to scale on graph paper, measures out cars and then drew then in as well. We added stairs and anything else that was goingin there and arrived at 30X36 as our 3 car garage. One thought is try and have it consturcted without any support posts if possible then the area is unobstructed

Try it and see.

On most "garage size" posts, the majority of the input, in a nutshell, says that bigger is better. I don't find that to be very helpful to the OP. Of course bigger is better. He/she knew that before posting the question.

I've had a 19'6" x 19'6" and (charliedawg) will just barely work with your two vehicles. You can't have a single other item in the garage but the cars, and you will have to turn sideways to slide into a half open cardoor.

We're about to move into our new house. It will be 22'6" x 23' and I'm sure it will feel cavernous to us.

My opinion is that most people truely need some type of storage shed in the backyard if possible. Once you get all the "crap" out of the garage, you don't need such a huge garage. The storage shed is also cheaper square footage than more garage.

Not everyone lives in country estates or rural areas. In town, space is often very limited. Most homebuyers want a house first, then a garage, not vice versa. In our area, even multi-million dollar homes have minimal garages. Look closely and you'll find storage lifts are not uncommon, usually for that summer fun Ferrari, Porsche or Mustang. (Not an endorsement of model shown as example.)

The stairs! I forgot to add that you need to consider the stairs going into the house. We are required to have an approximately 3' square landing, so that cuts into the width of the garage significantly. In our case it worked out fine, but I remember that someone else on here posted when the realized they couldn't fit their car in on that side because the garage was somewhat narrow.

definitely too shallow. we had a three-car, 21' deep garage in our socal home and it was awful. my DH had cabinets lining the front wall of the garage and we didn't want to move those when I bought a bigger SUV, but I could barely squeak in my SUV without hitting the front wall or having the garage door whack it in the back. so we made our new garage 25' deep and it's perfect. I like to be able to pull in during cold weather, close the garage door, and then get out and open my back door and unload groceries. so nice to stay out of the cold wind.

Dh has a smaller car - a lincoln ls - but he also loves the deeper garage even for it. it's just nice to have lots of extra room in length.

Jay, earlier in this thread I posted the following...

"Our 2 car garage is 19'8 x 19'5. I have been assured that this is big enough for our Ford contour and Ford F-150 pickup truck"

Well that statement turned out to be nothing but a bunch of bullchit. Our truck will NOT fit in this garage. After reading these posts my husband measured. Yes, I know we should have done this before...we're rookie builders and this is a gigantic oversight on our builders part........

But anyway, back to you. I would be thrilled to have the extra 10 inches that you will have. The width is not what is the problem for us, it's the garage door hardware. It will stick into the garage about 6-7 inches which keeps the garage door from shutting. It's too late for us. Our house is framed and getting brick any second now but if at all possible you might want to add another foot so that the inside hardware does not get in the way of your walkways.

Good luck to you.

Charlie,

I'm so sorry that this turned out to be the case. How discouraging! What kind of a garage door are you putting on the sticks into the garage? Is it a true carriage door or some other configuration? It looks like the current F-150 is 17'-6" long. My DH has an Avalanche which is 1' longer that this and in the winter, we squeeze it into our current garage which is 19'-3" deep (along with my car and his Harley). It is TIGHT, but it keeps both are cars snow free. I'm just wondering if there isn't some sort of a solution for you guys...

I'm still mulling over this issue. We are at the bidding stage of the building process, so I have time to make modifications. I just don't want to change the entire house plan at this point (although I would if a big enough issue came up). I believe I have figured out a way to add 2' to the width and 2' to the depth of two out of the three garage stalls. I know that this is still small, but I do know our cars (and a Suburban for that matter) would squeeze into the space. There is also room for garbage cans and recycling at the front of my vehicle, which leaves us an entire other empty stall for about another 12 years until the kids have a car. We KNOW that we will not be storing other "stuff" in the garage. Like I said, we have a second garage in the rear of the house which is 25'-6" deep and 10'-6" wide which flows into another 15'5"-12-'9" workshop. We intend to store our outside gear here (lawnmower, snowblower, etc.) and then we have a large unfinished room at the base of the basement stairs which I can line with shelves for storage of all the things that might end up in some people's garage. Add to this the massive amount of unfinished walk in area above the garage and the net net is that my husband and I feel we can live with this. We are the opposite of pack rats. We go through the house each year and donate to charity everything we aren't using, so we don't tend to accumulate "stuff". So, this morning, I think the small bump in the size of the garage is a reasonable compromise, although I am also considering resale. While I don't ever intend to move again, you can't plan for the unexpected... We will die someday and hopefully the house will still be standing. :) I guess that is why I'm still vacillating on this issue. I don't want to make a decision I will regret.

Hang in there Charlie. I hope you are able to figure something out wrt to your garage.

Jaymie

We're putting in a standard overhead door. The door is attached to a 2x6 and the hinges that allow the door to go up and down stick out another 4 inches. So a total of 6 inches is not usable space.

I actually have a teeny, tiny ray of hope here. I've spent most of the morning w/ my measuring tape.(my new best friend) I think my dh may have used the width instead of the length when determining whether he thought the truck would fit. Here are my figures....

length 19' 8.5"
minus 6.0" (hinges)
minus 18'10.0" (truck from bumper to bumper ford extended cab)
equals 4.5" to spare.

Plus my builder said we might gain an inch due to the incline of the garage floor for drainage. Now I know this isn't much space but it would work for us. I'm thinking of putting a padded bumper on the wall so my dh can just pull right up to it. Like you, we really just want to use the garage for our cars, nothing else, we get rid of everything. So if we can squeeze his truck in there I will be thrilled.

I just hope these numbers hold true when everything is actually installed. Cross your fingers for us :)

charliedawg I'm still not understanding the hardware issue. Can you use a normal roll-up door with an opener? That shouldn't have anything sticking out except the rails on the sides and in the ceiling.

BTW just for reference my current 24' deep garage fit my old f350, crewcab, long bed with some inches to spare. Haven't tried our recent dually, but I think it would fit too even with the long bed. It is always nice to have a large garage, but I don't think everybody has the luxury to fit that. I'd rather take the interior space over the larger garage. A taller ceiling would be another way to increase space for some storage up high if you can't do width and depth. Though I a storage building for lawn stuff etc that takes up the most space would imo be a better use of the space.

There are these little hinges on the inside that allow the door to bend as it is going up. They look kind of like a door hinge. Those only stick out an inch or two. But when you combine that with the actual door and the way it's installed it ends up taking up about 6 inches of space.

The hinges are what we think might hit the bumper when we lower the door.