Real wood doors when properly maintained will last for many years. If the door faces a strong sun, do not use a dark color stain or your real wood door or it will not last as long. Dark wood retains a lot of heat and is an enemy of natural wood. Some manufacturers will void the warranty if a dark color paint or stain is used. Composite faux wood garage doors like those offered by Clopay (www.clopay.com) and Ranch House Doors , are better products with high exposure to sun or in environments with high humidity. They can also handle dark colors. By the way, the Clopay and Ranch House Doors Elements Collection faux wood doors are not made of plastic. Plastic composite material like the material used in composite decking is heavy and not suitable for garage doors. Faux wood garage door prices varies so be sure to get price quotes from both companies.

I notice that the house has very light trim, light painting on the house itself, a sort of medium mix on the brown gray stone and the medium brown wood door and very dark on the roof of the porch, but the garage only has the very light trim and lightish main color. Have you thought about bringing some medium colors over for the garage trim and then making the garage doors a similar medium brown? What material are the garage doors made of? I have had good luck with acrylic paints but you need to match the paint type with the material.

Cheap doors aren't going to look good. IMHO, the only doors that really look good are custom made at considerable expense. That's why I hate the trend of sticking the garage out in front of an otherwise good-looking home. We pushed our garage back as far as we could to minimize it's appearance. I would like to some day build my own custom carriage doors, but it's low on my priority list. Wood doors can be made with insulation, and I'm sure they could be engineered to FL wind standards, but they would probably cost as much as the car behind them!

We purchased the Martin Pinnacle H Groove steel garage doors that look the most like wood of any faux wood doors I've seen, including Clopay. We had real wood doors prior to these that were damaged beyond repair due to the previous owner's neglect and didn't want to deal with the upkeep and maintenance of new wood doors; HOWEVER, in retrospect, I wish we had gotten real wood doors due to the following experience. The garage door installer ordered the doors through an authorized Martin door dealer. Martin sent the doors in the wrong color, but I actually liked the color, so we decided we would keep them if Martin would pay for us to repaint the trim on our house to match. They agreed. Once the doors were hung, we noticed MANY paint imperfections down to the metal on BOTH doors. I asked for replacement doors, but Martin would only offer a paint repair. I didn't like that answer because a dab-on paint repair is never the same as a factory finish and there were AT LEAST 20 spots needing paint. But we had no alternative so we scheduled one of their reps to come and do the paint repairs. The day after the install, we noticed a SIGNIFICANT difference in the temperature of the garage. It was about 10 degrees warmer than the day before. And this was only March in Phoenix. This was concerning because our summer temps are often in the 110 degree or higher range from July-Sept and we cool our garage. Martin's advertised R14 factor rating for these doors was completely misleading. When we inquired about the increase in temperature, we found out that the R14 rating is for the rails only, NOT the panels. The many panels on the door are only rated as R8! Being that we live in Phoenix and these doors face west, this was unacceptable to us. We knew that our AC bill would go through the roof come summer...and we were right; however, Martin was unwilling to remove the doors and refund our money. Our AC bill has been over $100 more per month this summer compared to last summer. So while the doors look nice, and even fool people who think they're real wood at a 5 foot distance, they are NOT what we expected for energy efficiency AT ALL! We are also disappointed in Martin Door. Even after speaking to the OWNER of the company, they were unwilling to help us. So if you're looking for the look of real wood garage doors, but don't want the real thing, and you don't care about energy efficiency, these are the doors. Nothing looks more like real wood.