Updated 2026-09-19 · by David Yifrach, Owner, Seaside Garage Door Experts · Virginia DPOR #2705188091

Garage Door Sizes: Standard Dimensions, How to Measure, and What They Cost in Hampton Roads

The standard single garage door sizes are 8 feet wide by 7 feet high and 9 by 7, with 8 by 8 and 9 by 8 as the taller options. The standard double sizes are 16 by 7 and 18 by 7, with 16 by 8 and 18 by 8 for trucks and overhead storage. Those are the sizes the manufacturers stock. What your garage will actually take is a separate question, because a door needs clearance above the opening and on both sides of it, and older Hampton Roads homes often come up short there. This guide gives you the size chart, the exact measurements to take, the clearances that decide which spring system you can use, and what a new door ran on our own invoices this year.

The standard garage door size chart

Garage doors are sold by width first, then height, and both are stated in feet. A 16x7 is sixteen feet wide and seven feet tall. Manufacturers build to these sizes as stock, and anything outside them is a custom or special order with a lead time attached.

One thing the size chart will not tell you: the width on the label is the door width, and it is meant to match the finished opening. It is not the rough framing dimension and it is not the outside of the building. Getting those confused is the single most common reason a door shows up and does not fit, which is why the next section matters more than this table does.

How to measure your opening

You need four numbers and a tape measure. Write them down to the nearest eighth of an inch. Unlike a passage door, a garage door cannot be planed, trimmed, or shimmed into a hole it does not suit, so an inch of error here is an inch you pay for twice.

1. Width of the finished opening. Measure the clear span between the finished jambs at the widest point, not the frame and not the door slab that is up there now. Take it at the bottom, the middle and the top, and use the smallest of the three.
2. Height of the finished opening. Floor to the underside of the header, taken at the left, center and right. If your slab is not level, and plenty of older Hampton Roads slabs are not, the smallest number is the one that governs.
3. Side room. The flat wall space from each side of the opening out to the nearest obstruction: a wall, a window, an electrical panel, a water heater.
4. Headroom and backroom. Headroom is the distance from the top of the opening to the ceiling or the lowest thing hanging under it. Backroom is the distance from the opening straight back into the garage.

If those four numbers land on a stock size and the clearances check out, you are buying a standard door. If any one of them is short, you are buying either a custom door or a different hardware package, and that is worth knowing before anyone quotes you. If you want the numbers checked against what is actually available, we measure on site as part of a quote. You can book a free measure and quote or call (757) 777-3330.

Headroom, side room and backroom

Three clearances decide whether standard hardware fits. Published minimums vary a little between manufacturers, so treat these as the working band rather than a single magic number, and note that anything at the bottom of a band leaves no margin for an out of level header.

Side room is the one people forget. A subpanel, a laundry hookup or a window set close to the opening can rule out a standard track on a wall that otherwise looks perfectly fine, and it will not show up on any measurement you take of the opening itself.

What to do when the headroom is short

Short headroom is common in older houses, in converted or raised garages, and under a room built over the garage. It does not mean you cannot have a door. It means the hardware changes.

• Low headroom track with torsion springs gets you down to roughly 9.5 inches by splitting the track into a dual path so the top section tips in sooner.
• Low headroom track with extension springs goes lower still, to around 4.5 inches, which is usually the last option before a custom solution.
• A jackshaft or wall mount opener removes the ceiling rail entirely by driving the torsion shaft from the side wall. This is the fix we reach for most on raised coastal homes and on garages with a storage loft, and it is covered in our guide to jackshaft openers on raised coastal homes.

The trade is real and worth stating: low headroom hardware has more moving parts in the track and it is less forgiving of a door that falls out of adjustment, so it wants its maintenance on schedule. Our garage door maintenance checklist covers what that involves.

What size doors Hampton Roads houses actually have

Most size guides stop at the national chart. Here is what our own record says, with the counts attached so you can weigh it yourself.

Two sources, both ours. The first is our Hampton Roads cost index, which is 51 paid invoices from April through September 2026. Four of those were full door installations, and all four were 16 feet by 7 feet. The second is our published case studies. We have written up 49 jobs; 15 of them record the door size in the write-up, and all 15 are 16 by 7, spread across Chesapeake, Norfolk, Suffolk, Poquoson, Yorktown and Tabb in York County.

Now the honest limit on that, because it matters. This is a record of jobs we were called to, not a census of Hampton Roads garages. A job record oversamples doubles: a 16 foot door is heavier, it carries more spring load, and it is the one that tends to break and to get replaced, so it turns up in a repair log more often than it turns up on the street. What the numbers fairly support is narrower and still useful: when we are called to a Hampton Roads garage, the door is overwhelmingly a 16 by 7 double, and no other size has appeared even once in the sized portion of our 2026 record. If you are budgeting or ordering parts blind, 16 by 7 is the safe first assumption here. It is not a substitute for measuring.

What each size costs installed here

Width moves the price less than people expect. Insulation, window inserts, the spring system and whether an opener is on the invoice all move it more. Here is the real spread from the four full door installations in our 2026 invoice set, printed with what was on each invoice so you can see what the money bought.

Median of those four: $4,060. The same door width spans $1,934 to $5,892, which is the whole point. When a quote comes in high or low against a neighbor's, the width is almost never the reason.

Two honest gaps in that table, stated rather than filled in. There are no single door installations at all in this 51 invoice sample, so we are not going to print a 9x7 installed price as though we had measured one this year; as a rule of thumb a single runs materially less than a double because it is less door and less spring, but that is judgment, not our data. And there are no 18 foot or 8 foot tall installs in the set either. For the wider published ranges by door type rather than by size, our new garage door installation page carries the current bands, and the new door cost breakdown walks through what drives them. If you want the exact number for your opening rather than a range, that is what the on-site measure is for: call (757) 777-3330.

The three sizing mistakes that cost people money

Measuring the old door instead of the opening. A door that was wrong when it went in stays wrong when you copy it. Measure the finished opening every time, even when the existing door looks like a clean fit.

Assuming two singles can replace one double, or the reverse. Two single doors need a structural post between them and one double needs that post gone. Either change is framing work and a permit conversation, not a door order. That is a decision to make before anyone prices a door, not after.

Ignoring what is above and beside the opening. The size can be perfectly standard while the garage is not. A finished room overhead, a duct across the header, a subpanel beside the jamb: any of those can change the hardware package and the price. A door that gets forced into a space that was not ready for it is also the door that comes back off its track later, which is a repair we see often enough that we wrote up how off-track doors start.

If your door is already misbehaving rather than being replaced, size is probably not your problem. Start with garage door repair and we will tell you honestly whether it is a fix or a replacement.

Frequently asked questions

What is the average size of a 2 car garage door?

The average two car garage door is 16 feet wide by 7 feet high. The common alternatives are 18 feet by 7 feet on wider openings and 16 feet by 8 feet where the builder framed a taller opening for a truck or an SUV. In our own Hampton Roads job record, 16 by 7 is the size that keeps coming back: all four full door installations among our 51 paid invoices from April to September 2026 were 16 by 7, and all 15 of our published case studies that record a door size are 16 by 7 as well.

Is 9x9 a standard garage door size?

9 feet wide by 9 feet high is a real manufactured size but it is not one of the common residential standards, so it is usually a special order rather than a stock door. The standard single door sizes are 8 by 7, 9 by 7, 8 by 8 and 9 by 8. If your opening measures close to 9 by 9, measure it again to the nearest eighth of an inch before ordering, because a door that is one size off cannot be trimmed to fit the way a passage door can.

Do garage doors come 10 feet wide?

Yes, 10 feet wide is available, usually as a 10 by 7 or a 10 by 8, and it is common on RV bays, workshops and detached garages built for a boat trailer. It is not a stock size at most retailers, so expect an order lead time rather than a same-week swap. On the Virginia Beach and Eastern Shore side we see wider and taller openings more often than average because of boat and trailer storage.

What size garage door for a 24x24 garage?

A 24 by 24 foot garage is a two car garage, and it almost always takes either one 16 foot wide door or two single doors of 8 or 9 feet each. Which one you can fit depends on the framing, not the floor: two singles need a structural post between them, so you cannot convert one 16 foot opening into two singles without a framing change. Measure the finished opening rather than the outside of the building, because the wall thickness and the framing take up several inches.

How much does a new 16x7 garage door cost installed in Hampton Roads?

Across the four full door installations in our April to September 2026 invoice set, all of them 16 by 7, the totals ran from $1,934 to $5,892 with a median of $4,060. The low end was a plain steel door with a strut and no opener. The high end was a carriage house door with windows, a jackshaft opener and high lift track. The size itself is a small part of that spread: insulation, windows, spring system and whether an opener is included move the number far more than the width does.

Related on Seaside

• Price a replacement door for your opening
• Is a new garage door worth the money?
• Case study: a Kingsmill new door installation, start to finish

Not sure what will fit your opening?

We measure the opening and the clearances on site and give you a written line-item quote, with the hardware package named. Family owned since 2013. A 5.0 rating across 81 Google reviews and 164 Thumbtack reviews. 5-year workmanship warranty. Licensed and insured, Virginia DPOR #2705188091.

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