Guide
How tall is a standard garage door?
Seven feet on most houses built before about 2000, eight feet on most built since. The moment you own anything with a roof rack, that difference stops being trivia.
Seven feet on most houses built before about 2000, eight feet on most built since. Ten and twelve feet exist but are shop and RV doors rather than house doors.
A 16x7, drawn to scale. Two normal cars side by side. The most common double door in America.
| Size | Rough opening | Steel, installed |
|---|---|---|
| 16x7 | 16'0" × 7'0" | $3,240 |
| 10x10 | 10'0" × 10'0" | $5,970 |
| 8x7 | 8'0" × 7'0" | $3,170 |
| 9x7 | 9'0" × 7'0" | $3,170 |
| 10x8 | 10'0" × 8'0" | $3,170 |
| 16x8 | 16'0" × 8'0" | $3,240 |
| 12x10 | 12'0" × 10'0" | $6,390 |
| 12x12 | 12'0" × 12'0" | $6,390 |
| 10x7 | 10'0" × 7'0" | $3,170 |
| 18x7 | 18'0" × 7'0" | $3,240 |
| 18x8 | 18'0" × 8'0" | $3,240 |
| 12x7 | 12'0" × 7'0" | $3,170 |
| 20x10 | 20'0" × 10'0" | $6,390 |
| 20x8 | 20'0" × 8'0" | $6,390 |
| 20x12 | 20'0" × 12'0" | $6,390 |
Guide ranges, checked September 2026. Prices move — get it in writing.
In full
Seven feet was the standard for decades and it is still the most common height on the American housing stock, simply because most houses are not new. It clears any ordinary car, most SUVs, and a pickup with nothing on the roof. It is the height that stops being enough the moment something is attached to the top of the vehicle.
Eight feet is now the default on new construction in much of the country, and the reason is the vehicles rather than the buildings. A full-size pickup is close to six and a half feet tall before anything is added; a roof rack, a light bar, a rooftop tent or a lift kit each add several inches, and they add them to a number that was already close to a seven-foot opening. Eight feet turns that from a calculation into a non-issue.
Above eight feet you are no longer in house territory. Ten feet is a workshop, a boat bay or a pole barn. Twelve is an RV door, and a building with a twelve-foot opening was designed around it. Both exist as residential products, but if you are asking what is standard, neither is.
Height costs more than width in one specific way people do not expect: headroom. Every sectional door needs clearance above the opening for the track to curve and the spring to sit, and that clearance is measured from the top of the OPENING, not from the floor. An eight-foot door in a ten-foot garage leaves less room above it than a seven-foot door in a nine-foot one, which is why the taller door sometimes needs a low-headroom kit and the shorter one does not.
Changing the height of an existing opening is a structural job, not a door swap. Going from seven feet to eight means cutting the header and reframing above it, and the header is holding up whatever is over the garage. Widening is usually the bigger job, but raising is the one people underestimate.
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