Our driveway is 19’ across and I wouldn’t want much less. My husband parks in the driveway and I in the garage and I’m grateful to have the space. 13’ will be right for getting in and out

Do you mean the 13' wide in my sketch for the car to pass through is enough or not enough? that's the dimension i am most concerned.

Sorry! Will be tight. Not right! Mostly because there is no give. With the house and the fence.

I just went out and measured 13’ on my driveway and it’s about what I have to get through if my husband is parked already but it feels bigger because the rest of the driveway is bigger and there is just grass on the other side.

That said if this was your only option I would still do it

What kind of street runs in front of the driveway? You have to have enough width in your driveway to “swing” into the driveway unless to can back all the way into the street before starting to turn your car. Also, a narrow driveway could impact resell.

it's a normal neighborhood street. there is still 25 ft from the front room to the street.

Can you design it so that you can turn around when you back out of the garage and pull forward? It seems wide enough to me considering a 2 car garage door is 16 ft wide so essentially you are moving in 8ft of space.

Also I have a narrow driveway so it doesn't bother me.

A 16 foot two car garage would never actually hold two cars though.

@WestCoast Hopeful that's exactly my worry. thank you for giving me your opinion

@khrisz good point about resell. I didn't think about that.

Here is my garage in all its messy glory. It’s technically a two car garage. Once you add any other things to store no way. This garage is 23’ wide so much wider than yours.

Let me correct myself - the DOOR for a 2 car garage is 16 ft , not the actual garage and they can be 18 ft. So if 2 cars can move into that width, why can't one easily move through 13 ft?

Like I said - I have a small driveway

My point is that two cars can’t comfortably fit into that width. Our opening is 18’ in pic above. I can’t imagine another vehicle in this space.

I think a 13’ driveway is doable if it’s your only option but I would want to try and make a different option work if I could.

I wish we had really thought about garage size more and how to actually have our two vehicles plus the things we store in the garage. Everyone uses their spaces differently so for some it’s not a concern.

@Debbi Washburn how narrow is your driveway? I thought about turn is around as you suggested, but making that turn around with that 18 ft from house to the garage could also be a challenge. Backing out is still my base plan

@WestCoast Hopeful i see. my 13' drive way will only for one car passing through and backing out, there will be no car parked there.

the 13' driveway is 30 ft long, once pass the granny's living room, it becomes 24 ft wide.

Does your family only have one vehicle? Where will additional vehicles go? You will be hard pressed to get two in your garage

we park two cars inside the garage. we don't park cars outside garage. it's a detached garage and will have storage in the back and side of the garage.

I would measure your cars and your belongings. Make sure you have space to walk around the vehicles and get in and out of them as well as access what you are storing. I think you might be overly optimistic in what you can fit in your garage.

My driveway is 8' wide, between my house and the neighbor's fence (which he put in 20 years after we bought the house)! The hardest part is backing a 6'wide U-Haul trailer down that driveway!

I think its about 9 - 10 ft wide and just enough for 2 cars tandem - I one if us had a big puck up, it wouldn't fit! I have to park to one side so I can swing my door open if I am in the front space.

Can't the architect calculate if that is enough turn around room?? I don't really know.

Came across this and it was helpful. Might be worth a read.

https://www.garagetooladvisor.com/design/garage-sizes/

@Debbi Washburn Architect confirmed the lot is not deep enough to create a turn around at the garage. A 13' driveway should accommodate any car passing through; I just haven't used one before. My current house has a driveway of 17' wide and I feel it could be narrowed to 13'. But without using one before, I don't know if I should proceed. Good to know you have a narrow driveway with no problem to back out. That's exactly kind of information I am looking for.

@mtvhike I would pay my neighbor to leave the fence down. backing out an 8' driveway is hard. how long is your 8' driveway?

Obviously a wide driveway is good but thirteen feet is not too tight. As far as reselling goes, what matters is how different your driveway is from the typical driveway in your market. My driveway is about ten feet wide alongside the house and I haven't had a problem. It doesn't work to park on the narrow part of the driveway, we either stop before the front corner or past the back corner of the house. In my area, many older houses with detached garages have a narrow driveway beside the house so mine is not as narrrow as some. The biggest issue is snow removal but thirteen feet is plenty of width to maintain an adequate path. With the backup cameras on newer cars, narrow driveways are not an impossible obstacle

That could be the layout of my drive, except mine is ten or 11 feet wide as it passes the house down to the street. The length is about 75 feet.

My house was built in 1935 and the side yard setback is 10 feet. In the 70s they converted the attached one car garage (with U turn entry in the back) to a den and added a two car detached garage in the back yard.

I have no problem backing out, but it makes visitors nervous. I always tell them if it looks like you are about 6 inches from the edge of the driveway on the driver side, you have plenty of clearance on the right. Now with rearview cameras, it is a breeze.

I always park in the garage.

The only thing I hate is snow blowing.

For your reference, this is a picture of my driveway. Total distance from my house to the neighbor's fence is 12 feet. The window well section is 18 inches wide and the actual driveway is 8 feet leaving 30 inches for the plant strip. At this width, normal care is sufficient for access although my daughter prefers to park on the street instead of backing down the driveway. A few more years driving experience and/or a backup camera will make it easier for her.

To the OP: I sold the house last month, so it's all moot. Just an example!

Where do you live? Do you have snow? Ice? Where will it be shoveled? I would be more concerned about the bend in the driveway towards the garage, which will require backing and turning to position a car on to the driveway. Can you pave a straight driveway so that the person parked to the left in the garage, at least, has more driveway to work with? Will it be possible for the person on the right to back out of the garage if the other car is parked IN the garage without hitting the car as she or he turns to position themselves on the driveway? This seems VERY tight.

My town is planning on changing building codes to only permit narrow driveways at thr street that can then widen when they approach the garage. They are also proposing set back garages or alley entry ways whenever feasible. I know many HOAs also have similar ideas, so I expect this issue to be growing. I thibk 13 feet is fine. It's that curve that may make it tricky. Maybe you could set up cones with tall flags in them in an empty parking lot to get a fee for it?

This is going to be a silly question - is that 13 ft the actual space from the wall to the fence or is that the actual blacktop of the driveway? The measurement on the plan looks like it stops short of the wall of the house. That could mean an extra 6" on each side! Maybe I'm reaching...

http://www.drivewaytips.com/layout.html

@Debbi Washburn 13 ft is the actual distance from fence to the wall. the sketch is a preliminary drawings, and the architect left room for the bricks.

@ptreckel I live in Texas, have seen snow twice. every time when we have snow, or below zero temp, school and work stop, we holed up at home and go nowhere because we do not know how to drive and live in cold weather. I didn't think about that curve because the driver on the right side has 34' distance to back out. I guess If I cannot curve onto the 13' driveway in one move, I could back out on right side, pull forward and move to left, then back out straight through that 13' driveway.

we could pave 5' side setback all the way to garage to create a straight driveway for left car. We test drove today and some of you are right, it's a challenge for the right car to make that curve in one maneuver. It required back and forward and then back out. It was doable; but we need to think if we want to do it everyday. we are thinking to slant the garage a little bit, asked architect to sketch it up to see if that helps. Thanks everyone!

I measured my driveway and it is just a few inches over 34 feet from corner of house to the garage door. This time of year, we typically park in the driveway so the right car has to pay attention to the position of the other car. My husband just bought a different car so he had a few days of trying to find new reference marks before he could back out without issues. After a couple of tries, you learn to judge the route by reference points and then you just follow the pattern. Of course, your results will vary depending on your choice of vehicle; we both have cars but big SUVs and full size pickups would be more of a challenge.

Frankly, if there are other building options I would scrap that plan. We are often amazed at the driveway / parking problems that homeowners create. It would be very stressful to have to come to or leave your home every time while concerned about parking.

DH and I are residential lot developers , and we live in the neighborhood. We have witnessed the crazy driveway situations that home owners have created. Some driveways are much too narrow or short to accomodate all the cars in the family, so someone is always shifting cars around.

In other words, clearly think through every scenario. Can we easily pull into our driveway, pull out safely, turn around if needed, not slide off a dropoff if you miscalculate, not hit the fire hydrant that is 2 inches from your driveway, etc?

@Lyndee Lee thank you for checking your driveway dimension. Since I am doing a new build, I still have room to increase 34' to 35' by making the grandparent's living room 1' less. If you don't park the car in your driveway, is it easy to back out the right car?

@grapefruit1_ar What kind of driveway width do you recommend? If the distance from the grandparent's living space to the garage is increased by another 4 ft. which means 38ft for the right car to make the lane shifting to left. Do you think that driveway is manageable and not crazy?

I don't think 1 extra foot of length would make much difference. Our driveway starts to angle at 16 feet from the garage and the entire triangle from there to the corner of the house is garden, deck and sidewalk.

Driveways are similar to garages and closets as larger is always better but when it gets down to tough choices, I would rather have a foot more living room and a foot less driveway. My advice is always look around your neighborhood and see if anyone else has a similar setup. If everyone else has 20 foot wide driveways and yours is 13, future buyers may be concerned. In my area, this is a common setup for those lucky enough to have a two car garage. Many of the other houses around me have single car garages or 8 feet wide driveways so mine is better than average.

To be honest, I would not build or buy a house with the driveway that you describe. The width of the driveway in not the concern it is the fact that you cannot turn around when coming out of the garage. When exiting a garage you should have enough turning radius so the you can drive forward out of your driveway. i would not want to back all of the way out of the driveway.

Can the house be shifted on the lot so that you can have a short driveway or a garage in front of the house? If your architect cannot make this work l would choose a different lot or different house plan.

@grapefruit1_ar all detached garages in the back of the house would require backing out for a long distance unless it's a side loaded garage. You don't like detached garage in general or you don't like this particular design because of the curve?

@Lyndee Lee I wish I could see the plan view of your garage and driveway layout. it sounds so similar to the design we are dealing with. Your description gives me hope that this is a workable design. We did sort of test drive on our current driveway, we feel it's doable, but need some patience and maneuver. We are considering to push the garage 5' further back, we still have 5' allowed room in the back, that would increase 34' to 39' and should give us more room to back the right car into that 13' drive through path.

We have a detached garage and an integral garage. My issue would be that you have no where to park or turn. I cannot imagine backing out of a long driveway.

The answer depends on how well you can back up your car. Some people could back up a truck in that space. It makes me nervous but I've done it at that distance. Just have to take your time until you get used to it.

I cannot remember if you clarified what the rest of the lot looks like? Where you are? What other lots and driveways around you are like?

If you have the space to push the garage back on the lot, I would do so unless you have another reason for the current location. In my case, we had quite a large useless space behind the garage so we built a garden shed addition to use the space. In that spot the dirt was full of rocks with some concrete motorcycle parking space and tree overhead with privacy fence on the north and east sides. My space had no sunlight so no practical use at all for the space. I wish the original builder would have moved my garage closer to the back of the lot.

My other comment is make sure you have planned for adequate lighting. We have motion sensor lights on the garage, but the space between the house and fence is a dark tunnel. When I first got my current car, the window tinting was dark and I had to use the camera because I coudn't see anything in the side mirrors.