My folks have a three-bay garage, with three single doors. But, each bay is a little wider than it HAS to be, and here's the benefit: when you open a car door, it can open ALL the way without dinging the other car door! I'm not talking about a Ford Fiesta door, either, but Lincoln Continental-size doors. You could even open BOTH cars' doors! No one ever got salt on their dark trousers from brushing up against the cars in winter, or scraped their school packs on the quarter panel.

They also stored the tractor, sunfish sailboat, a rowboat, bikes, etc. in the third bay. The car my brothers and I shared was parked OUTside of course.

Now that their town has gone to providing trash and recycling bins, which are huge, they are glad to be down to one car. The bins take up a significant portion of a bay!

Our current house had a normal two-car garage, and I'd love a few more feet for room for the bikes, besides the law mower and snow blower and ice salt. As it is we need to move a vehicle to get any of those out. When our city changed from little recycling bins to big rolling ones, we had to get the smallest size when the biggest one didn't fit.

A neighbor widened their garage by about 2 feet, to the permittable build line. An expensive change (foundation, roof) but I'll bet it's life-changing!

I simply disagree. A garage is a great place to park cars, boats, mowers, tractors, etc. It is often used for storage and hobby areas, which a garage can be either good or bad for, depending on what your hobby is. I truly think that people praise a garage for flexibility that it simply doesn't have.

The house I grew up in, and many of those around me, had an unfinished enclosed storage area that ran partially behind the garage and partially behind the house. The space was probably 15ft x 25ft and all of them had double exterior doors (some also had double doors into the garage) and an entrance to the mud room. The floors were concrete and the space was not finished (but was easy to finish), it was truly a flexible space. Many people used it as storage, some as a shop and others simply converted it to more living space.

Garages are often touted for flexibility that they don't really have, they are incredibly inefficient to condition, the need to constantly raise and lower huge doors makes dust control nearly impossible, the presence of cars limits the use of lacquers and sprays for crafts, not to mention the smells that are unique to cars can inundate other things in the garage.

Accessible, flexible space is valuable in a home and garages can make sense for that. Building a huge shop area on your house may not have the value to someone else when you sell the home, but most people will value to an oversized garage at least to some extent. But I still feel strongly, that large garages are the compromise we must make to get the flexible space that we need, while protecting a sometimes imaginary resale.

Note: The last time I posted something like this I got beat up pretty bad. If you disagree then great, though my opinion may be different than yours, it is not wrong, as it is simply my opinion.

A lot depends upon the space you have available. In our old house, the barely two car garage was pretty much the only available storage, so it never saw a car. At our new house, with plenty of land we have a big barn, a shed, AND an attached garage. This gives us the luxury of actually keeping a car, and only a car in the garage. That's it; just a car, plus maybe a bucket of salt and a shovel for winter. We also have a dry, insulated basement, which is much better storage for most things. Many things can be adversely affected by heat, cold, mice, humidity, and vermin, none of which are a problem in our basement.

A garage intended for parking a car has to be bigger than many people realize. My wife's Olds 88 is 12' wide with both doors open. Couple that with a little wiggle room for errant parking, and our 15' wide (inside) garage is none too big for one car.

I've always managed without a big garage. In fact my last house didn't have one at all. Would I preferred to have one? You bet but we managed to be able to store all our stuff in the small shed, down the basement, etc.

As for the house we're building, I definitely would have preferred more width but not to the detriment of inside the house space. It was either one or the other.

Bry, I would love such a space! In fact, my dad had one, though it wasn't accessible from the house, only from outside. All the yard and garden stuff was there. But the tractor, a big international harvester, needed the speed and height of the garage. I would like a little shed just for the bikes, but here it would require a permit, and setbacks would put it in the middle of our back yard.

But ya know, whether you have an open space or the same square footage divided between car and "other" space, it's still under roof.

When I use spray paint for sets and stuff, I just back the car out, so it's multipurpose :) But yes, I do have to move them to put the car back in.

The "house in my head" has a two car facing one way, and a tandem facing the back for the bikes and yard equipment and work space with a concrete double utility sink. Or maybe a space like you describe!

Do you have to condition a garage? Dad does have a heater for winter, to keep it a balmy 38, but I consider that a luxury (ooh, but a luxury I could get used to...)

When I hear comments suggesting a garage is too big on here, I assume the poster is a city boy/girl. :) The truth is.. we all live very differently. A three car garage in my rural area really isn't enough storage. (LL is accurate in that we have no basement. All tools/hobby equipment/gardening supplies/riding lawn mower/bicycles/etc. live in the garage.) Nearly all of my neighbors have garages AND shop buildings or barns. The vocal garage critics on here would cringe at the size of some of them; meanwhile, every male in my life wants a bigger garage...

When I lived in a more suburban area, I hated having to park my car very carefully around DH's car in the too-small garage. Honestly, I would have given up some interior house room to not have to crawl out of the car each day. Again, we are all different in our lifestyles and preferences...

Location and lifestyle differences for sure.
I drive a big truck and I'm very happy to have sufficient space to park him under roof in the new house. It will be a first. =)

Location and lifestyles do make a difference. I was told in one of my early posts on this forum, that we should think about only a one car garage for our retirement home (we're planning to retire and build in two years at 62). Hah! Right now our garage is the typical 24x24 and will be the same when we build (but we will have some basement storage then too. Our garage parks our two cars (Acadia and Jeep Trailhawk) comfortably plus two kayaks (standing on end and hooked to the wall to secure) and two bikes against one side wall and a raft (the frame stands against the other side wall and the tubes are deflated for storage). Also lots of gear, oars, paddles, helmets, life jackets, etc, plus tools, paint, birdseed, ice chests, two large trash cans, etc. Smart storage helps. We have three sets of utility shelves (one for tools), one primarily gear, and the other miscellaneous. Oh, and, of course, the beer fridge! Even with all that we can walk completly around each vehicle and fully open the car doors (but not the passenger side on mine and the driver's side on his at the same time). We do have a fairly empty storage room that opens to the back yard that holds the lawn mower and yard tools, but the garage storage for our sporting gear works best for us. It was a bit tighter when DH had a big truck though.

To clarify my position, I support building all the garage you need, if you have farm equipment that needs a home plus a maintenance area, then build ample space for that. I simply think that too many people enlarge a garage for storage, shop and craft space, and would be better served by building a garage AND a separate storage, craft or shop space.

As for being a "city boy," guilty as charged, the family farm has 6 barns, 2 massive equipment sheds, and a milking parlor. I absolutely couldn't wait to get away.

Location definitely matters. We're considering doing a second garage accessible in the walkout basement after going to an open house that had the same setup. Around here SO many households have 4 wheelers, snowblowers, boats, seadoos, etc., that we think it would be a better use of the basement than a bigger "regular" storage room would be (obviously we'll still have a small one).

Different lifestyles. I would lover to have a garage bigger than my house. A place to tear apart a car and have room for everything, still have room to build other projects and have room to do woodworking or whatever and still have space to spare. If you are going to waste your garage by just using it for storage and parking a car in, then yes, a 2 car garage is all that is needed

I fought my husband and our architect quite a bit about having a 2- or 3-car garage in our retirement home. But I will likely inherit a nice little sportscar some day, and will need a place to store that as well as our two practical cars. We priced out the cost of storage facilities for that car for the winter, and making a 2-car into a 3-car garage was cheaper (other factors considered as well). We have two bays, one deep enough for two cars. It saves on space, and given that we would only drive two at a time, at the most, we can live with shuffling cars in and out.

And, like others, we have no basement, so we use the garage and the area above it for all out-of-season storage.

Amen Lavender! It's really about lifestyle and building a custom home is all about building a structure to fit your lifestyle. We spend a ton of time outside and use the garage for boat, snowmobile, atv, riding mower, etc... Our 40x26 garage will be JUST large enough to get us by until we get the outbuilding put up.

A large heated garage is also great in MN because it allows me to get work done without being locked in the house all winter.

One of my favorite couples (w/1 child) have a somewhat pretentious house, it has a three-car garage at either end (end-loading) It's a expanded copy/reinterpretation of the Wythe house in W-burg. Built in 1986. It's in a small development of about 12 4-5 acre lots. I don't know who it was built for, my friends/customers are the second owners. More than once we have set up shop in the unused garage spaces for the duration of our projects there.

Casey

For me the main question about a large garage -- if that is an option -- is whether any or all of it needs to be attached to the house, and how that attachment is made. If folks have the room to spread out the structure(s), why not do so? As bry911 noted, if one wants a shop, why not have one, rather than a corner of a garage?

Yes, dependent on location, lifestyle, and priorities in space allocation.

In our area the properties are much smaller, and many folks would not have a garage at all if zoning did not require covered parking. Garage conversions to living space are pretty common. Most people don't own a mower, much less a riding one, and we have to drive to see snow.

Our friends in the NE are building a house, but they live in town, small lot, so they still will not have a garage. They'll still have their rowing shells and equipment in the backyard, and keep scraping the ice off their windshields.

Storage spaces are fine but they don't need to have big overhead doors with a driveway to the street thereby compromising an otherwise great house design.

I miss George Carlin.

Remember his monologue about Americans and our *stuff*? I think of him when I drive past one of those big self-storage centers -- the concept for which made one man very, very rich. I think of Carlin when I see three family cars on the driveway in front of a house where the four-car garage is bigger than the house. (What's IN that garage? Meth Lab? LOL)

We built one (oversized) 2-car garage where the norm is 3-car garages, and now we only have one car! The second space is empty except when our house-sitter is here. Our basement and attic have a few things in them; nothing major.

What's IN those self-storage spaces? How long do people leave things there?

Chisue- In our area, we have long winters and short, hot summers. I don't have a storage unit (LOL) but the ones I see have motor boats, campers, canoes, skis, snowmobiles, and other camping, hobby equipment.

Most people don't have the space for all these things in their garages! :)

And just as glad to keep them there, where they won't get scuffed by people walking by or all cobwebby and spider-egg-sac-y.

My old neighborhood everyone had 3 car garages and about a third of them were so stuffed with junk they had to park their cars outside.

My 3rd bay got pretty bad at times so I am not winning any contests myself. A lot of it was friend family members who had moved etc. In the end I gave away a mountain of crap and I still have more than any sane person needs.

My new garage is 24 x 28 so not real big. I was worried about it but now that I have moved and I am getting stuff put away I am looking forward to a nice clean garage.

This time we finished it with insulation, good lights, tight fitting door, natural light, etc. I don't want to junk it up.

Bpath- I hate that! Ick :)

Another very good reason to have more storage! LOL

Authors Virginia and Lee McAlester in their classic book "A Field Guide to American Houses" point out four technological advances which have greatly influenced the shapes of American houses over the "three-and-one-half centuries that have passed since the earliest European colonization: 1) Massed plans--Rather than the historical simple linear plan, houses increasingly developed, or were expanded, to deeper, wider multiple bays or rooms; 2) Heating (and later air conditioning)--Practical cast-iron stoves replaced massive wood or coal burning fireplaces for heating, and later central furnaces encouraged the development of compound and irregular house plans; 3) Wood balloon-framing and later platform-framing: These rapid and economical wall framing methods allowed house shapes to become much more irregular, unlike the earlier load-bearing masonry walls which limited unnecessary outside corners; and...wait for it...4) Integral garages--When autos first became common they were housed separately, in detached garages, as had been the previous horses and carriages. An accelerating trend for integral garages has " dramatically affected the overall size and shape of American houses" from 15% of the house in 1930, to 25% of the house in 1945, to 45% of the house in 1960. The style and form of many 21st century houses and their facades is probably more affected by the garage than by any other single factor! The tail now wags the dog! A great many folks now have a garage with a house attached!

Our previous house had a two car garage. That garage had plenty of space for our two cars, our overflow purchases from Costco, and my husband's tools because we had a nice storage shed in the backyard that the previous owner had put there. Our current home has a large three car garage that sometimes feels cramped because we store more things. We now have two kids who like to go biking with their dad and we now have camping gear to store. The third bay technically has more square footage than the storage shed our previous home had but it's really less usable square footage. Unfortunately our current neighborhood has rules against storage sheds. In our area houses don't have basements so everything is stored in the attic, garage or a storage shed.

I think the biggest obstacle to attractive home design is that darn front-loading garage. If you can have a side entry, there are many beautiful homes. Even a detached garage in back with short walk to house (and paved alley access) would work for people, who don't have/need large backyards.

Garage area works better for us for a gym space. Also for flex space as needed. Cheaper to build and can open the door to get the air in rather than a smelly room.

I'm a little late to join in this thread, but some of you may remember that I received a lot of negative feedback on my floorplan intially because it had a front facing three car garage. The garage is a tandem garage so it will only look like a two car garage from the front, but the third bay did create some layout limitations. Some people could not understand why a garage was taking precendence over living space. But for my husband, the garage is his living space. Working on cars is his hobby, and he spends lots of time in the garage. Having that three car garage will most likely improve his feeling about the house more than anything that could be added to the interior. If we had more money, a bigger lot to live on etc., we would probably build an even bigger garage but it would definitely not be front facing. I think garages are unique to each household. What works best for one isn't going to necssarily be what works best for the other. If a person's hobbies and lifestyles are improved by having a big garage, then why limit functionality just to achieve a certain appearance? In an ideal world we could have it all (form and function), but most of us have a lot of limitations to work with.

I also should mention that houses in my area of the country do not have basements, and my neighborhood does not allow storage sheds.

I've always lived in northern climates. Scraping windows at 6am is not fun. A 2.5 car garage is usually necessary. One car for each spouse, plus room for the snow-blower / lawn mower (it's not always practical to outsource snow removal and lawncare).

If you ride a motorcycle, you need another 1/2 space to use it comfortably (yes, a motorcycle CAN be shoved in front of a parked car, but it's impossible to remove it without shuffling cars around, and in a region where the weather is volatile, you never know if it's going to be a good bike day until the morning-of, so shuffling cars around in the morning before going to work isn't practical.)

So that justifies the width of a 3 car garage for my family.

Does it have to be more than 12 feet deep, if my car is only 11 feet long? Well...

Some people can justify building a special hobby house, but if you keep tools around so you can fix things around the house when they get broken (again, outsourcing isn't always practical) you need a place to store the tools where they are accessible, but not eating up living space. I think most people store those tools in the garage, so some breathing room is necessary for a tool cabinet, and a pathway to access those tools without shuffling cars around. And of course, it's nice to have a little room to maneuver around all four sides of the car.

For us, a detached garage isn't practical for our lot (and I'll be honest: I don't enjoy carrying two kids through 2-foot snow any more than I have to. Though they be but little they are HEAVY.)

There are climates/regions/lifestyles that require more/less garage space. In an ideal world we would all ride our unicorns to work/shop/recreate, but until that day arrives, we will have to make compromises because motorized vehicles are such an integral piece of modern American life.

I don't have a garage, but I wish I did! But also no kids to carry through the snow banks (LOL)

We can't use the barn for anything but hay storage, since our unicorns (I mean horses) eat a lot of food! :)

Our home is planned to have 1640sf of garage space, 4-car setup. I want plenty of space to get around the cars, especially with bikes, etc.

I drive a Ford F250 and am very much looking forward to our upcoming build with adequate space for it finally. It sits outside now. We live in the country and I never thought I'd go with a front loading garage, but our plans will have front (angled though) loaded 3 bay garage. The reason is that we are building on a lake site with somewhat limited width without felling more trees than is desired and the best view is lake-facing. Even with the bigger garage in the plans, we are starting on a pole building elsewhere on the property for additional storage.

We had a three car garage on the must have list the last time we were home shopping. We had a son who was about to be a third driver in the family, but now we don't want his junky car in our nice, oversized three car garage dinging our doors and stuff.

We also live in the north with four distinct seasons, so we have a snowblower, shovels and a lawn mower. There are five of us and we live in town on a bike trail, so we have bikes. We have kids, so there are sports equipment, balls, scooters and go karts stored in the garage. We have an extra freezer because the freezer on the refrigerator isn't big enough. The tool bench is out there, but the workspace for projects is in the basement, which is accessed by a staircase in the garage, a new luxury since we shopped for homes last....stairs from the garage to the basement. They are handy, although I feel very gluttonous for having both a three car garage AND a basement.

It is nice space to have. Cars are bigger than they used to be. It was a struggle to get a minivan and sedan in a 2.5 car garage at our last house. We have friends and family who own larger SUVs who only park one of the cars inside the garage because there isn't room for two. We did our time scraping ice off windows in -40 temperatures. Now our sons have to do it. LOL.

The front loading thing is offputting. I hated the look of our garage, but disliked having to drive around a corner to park my car in houses we looked at. I am a terrible driver. The front facing garage is winning me over. My 9 year old spends his entire day in the garage or front yard, playing with friends. He opens the garage doors to signal that he is awake and available to play. It is nice to sit in the garage with the doors open and watch the rain, or the neighborhood. I see older people doing that during my walk. The garage is the new front porch.