Does a double garage door cost twice as much as a single?
No — a double typically costs more than one single but noticeably less than two singles, because you are paying for one installation, one opener, and one set of springs and track rather than two of each. The panel material scales with width, but nearly everything else does not scale linearly.
What scales and what does not
Panel material scales roughly with area, so a sixteen-foot door uses about twice the steel of an eight-foot one. That part is linear. Almost nothing else is. One installation visit instead of two, one opener instead of two, one torsion assembly instead of two, one set of vertical tracks per side rather than four total.
That is why the comparison people should be making is not "double versus single" but "one double versus two singles" — and on that comparison the double usually comes out ahead on total cost.
What a wide door adds
- Struts. Sixteen and eighteen-foot doors need reinforcement across the sections — struts on a 16-foot door.
- Heavier springs and hardware sized for the greater weight.
- A larger opener requirement on heavy insulated doubles — what horsepower you need.
- Wind reinforcement considerations, since a wide span is the vulnerable one — the weakest point in a windstorm.
The comparison that is not about price
Two singles buy redundancy that a double cannot: a spring failure on one bay does not trap both vehicles. For some households that is worth more than the cost difference, particularly where both cars are needed daily. The full trade-off, including the structural side, is in two singles or one double.
Going the other direction — converting two singles into one double — is a structural project rather than a door swap, because the center post is load-bearing. That is covered in combining two doors into a double and usually involves a permit, per permits for garage doors.
If you have two doors to replace
Doing both at once is generally more efficient than doing them a year apart — one trip, one setup, and the doors match, which matters visually more than people expect. The reasoning is in replacing both doors at once, and it is also the curb-appeal argument in garage doors and resale.
Ask for it quoted both ways so you can see the difference rather than guess at it, and compare scope rather than bottom lines, per comparing quotes. Our OKC team quotes free and itemized, with financing available.
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Related Questions
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