One of my favorite aspects of mid-century home design is the creative way builders and home owners designed and decorated garage doors. Since I've been home hunting I've come across a lot of wonderful garage door designs and I've also dug up some great articles about how to spice up your own garage door that I thought I would share here. Hopefully these great articles will give other mid-century home owners some ideas on how to add a little flair and style to their own garage doors. Click on images to see them full-size!
Garage Doors (1952):
Garage Doors (1954):
Garage Doors (1961):
If you'd like to see more photos of mid-century style garage doors I highly recommend visiting the
Modern Garage Doors group @ Flickr. You'll find lots of inspiration and colorful ideas there!
Hi Kimberly, I love your blog - the design is fabulous! My brother found you (we share a love of retro) and I've enjoyed having a look through your previous posts. Especially love this one on the garage doors - don't feel half so weird now I've seen it that I have a similar file on front doors! I have posted some 50s display home pics you might enjoy on the Inspire Files. Looking forward to having a read through your blog list too - looks great. See you again! Bye now, Jacqui
ReplyDeleteHi Jacqui! Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. It's nice to meet other home owners who are also inspired by mid-century design. I took a peek at your own blogs and enjoyed them as well. I think anyone who is interested in "mid-century living" will find Inspire-Home inspiring so I've one ahead and added you to my link list. Thanks again!
ReplyDeleteI never knew about the modern garage door flickr page and here I thought I had ever possible mid-century flickr page bookmarked. Oh how I wish we had the money to buy a beautiful mid-century home but alas we do not. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteWith the $8000 tax refund and home prices as low as $125,000 in some areas I'm looking in it's cheaper to actually buy than rent right now in many places in CA. I guess it's not that way in your neck of the woods, Greg? Of course I'm also debt free and looking at fixer-uppers.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately we have a lot of tax debt, tons of bills with the kids and houses around here range from 350k on the low end to about 800k on the high end. There are great mid-century houses here in Silver Spring (it started to grow as a city right after the war so many of its houses were built from the late forties through the mid-sixties) that we'd love to buy but just can't afford it. You can see from just scrolling down the front page of this local mid-century realty site that it's all in the upper range. Too bad they're so expensive.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the homes featured on that blog are BIG! They seem to average about 2000+ sq ft and would probably cost $600,000-2 million in CA. As my previous posts illustrate, we're looking at homes in a range of mid-century styles that only average about 1000 sq. ft. or less. Usually they only have 1 bathroom and 2-3 bedrooms. But after living in a cramped 1 or 2 bedroom apt. for most of my life, 1000 sq. ft. will be luxurious!
ReplyDeleteLuckily California is full of post war suburban developments with small and stylish homes that don't cost an arm and a leg. Of course many of the homes I'm looking at were bought for 3x as much only a few years ago. The prices in many suburban neighborhoods are lower than they've been in decades.
Yeah, they are pretty big but there are several decent 2 BR, 1 Bath homes around here in the 300k range but that's still too much for us. I hope you find something really great that you can display here on the blog and keep a photographic record of the new pieces of furniture, appliances, sculptures, etc. that complete the feel as time goes on. Thrift stores around here always have really good mid-century knick-knacks that so many people just walk right by without noticing (or knowing the value of what they're passing up on for only a few bucks).
ReplyDeleteLove this historical post! Great blog, Kimberly :)
ReplyDeleteThanks a bunch, Gretchen!
ReplyDeleteI just visited your Eichler blog and loved it so I added it to my blog roll. I'm a huge Eichler fan myself. My husbands family recently had to sell their Eichler family home and its been a sort of heartbreaking situation for everyone involved, but it's great to see people who love Eichlers buying them and restoring them. :)
I'm just itching to do something cool to our garage door (which is the standard paneled replacement door everyone seems to get). It will never look like a true original, but I'd love to give it some pizzazz - especially since it's a large part of my view out the kitchen window! Thanks for these images (and I already love that Flickr group)!
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll share some images if you decide to brighten up your garage door, Tikimama! A lot of these "how to" articles seem pretty easy to follow if you're the handy/craft type. I really hope I find a house that lends itself to some garage door design and color.
ReplyDeleteI have a Flickr album of some interesting garage doors in the Baldwin Hills Estates area of Los Angeles: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7905531@N03/sets/72157627865076962/
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