The newest innovation in low maintenance garage doors.

When selecting a construction material for a garage door, many homeowners gravitate towards timber thanks to its beautiful natural aesthetic. However, there are several long-term issues that using wood can bring, such as fading, warping or rotting, alongside ongoing maintenance.

Prestige Doors & Gates, specialists in architectural garage doors and gates, has started to experiment with composite cladding materials that still create the desired natural timber look but with additional benefits. ArchiPro spoke with Prestige’s manager Ben Broide about how these innovative materials can ensure your garage door lasts the distance.

What’s new with these materials and what benefits do they bring?

No one in the New Zealand garage door industry really deals with composite materials in place of timber, as far as we are aware. Timber is a great natural product but it also needs constant long-term maintenance and gets weaker over time, especially with a lifetime exposed to the sun.

We have started using a limestone-based composite material to clad our garage doors and gates that is made of similiar components used in flooring and decking. This means it is very durable and far more impact resistant than timber.

The material is put into a mould made from timber, so it is very similar to the real thing. It has a flexible rubber exterior so, unless you get a massive gauge on your door, you are unlikely to see any scratches. Like all Prestige-manufactured products, it’s clad on an aluminium frame, which means that both the cladding and frame are bullet proof and can’t be touched by weather.

The main benefits that the composite materials bring are an improved lifespan of the door and low maintenance. You don’t have to repaint or restain it as you do with timber, and to clean it, you only need to use soap and water occasionally.

How many tones does the new composite material range come in?

Each composite comes in a different range of tones, generally with around four to eight options. Many times, when looking over samples, clients have unwittingly chosen the faux timber over the real as it often looks more rustic, depending on which colour they choose, of course.

There are several different tones of timber, from a sandy, birch-coloured one to a darker, stained-oak look, but we also offer a painted aesthetic in black or grey.

What sort of projects are you working on with this new material?

We are currently working on a custom gate project with the composite material for the director of the company.

He has currently got an existing timber gate that is still perfectly functional but the colour of the timber is fading. He has sleeper rails in his stone wall and the composite material looks a lot closer to those than the actual timber in the current gate does.

What type of trends are you seeing in the garage door and gate industry?

We have been receiving a lot of requests for oversized garage doors recently – huge doors, some are eight metres wide! People don’t want two or three garage doors anymore, they just want one. I think having that extra storage space is also a draw.

Our clients are starting to move away from standard Colorsteel and are looking more for custom or modern style doors. The old colour-steel wood-grain doors are going out of fashion.

Gates are more customised products compared to garage doors so there are always new ideas popping up, but we have seen a shift from iron and steel gates to aluminium due to it lightweight and corrosion-resistant properties.

In what ways does Prestige Doors & Gates stand out in the market?

We’re a mid-sized company and we’re very niche, which gives us a lot of flexibility in our designs. It’s very rare that we can’t help with an idea a client may present to us, no matter how unusual it may seem.

We are one of the leaders in innovation and have produced approximately 10 different products in the last few years, not to mention all the customised jobs which are totally unique.

Also, we don’t limit ourselves to only creating garage doors or gates, we can also make fencing or different odd jobs such as decorative laser cut panels for ceilings and walls. Our focus is on creating customised, personalised products with a strong focus on quality – we’re not the cheapest but that’s for a good reason!

If you’d like to find out more about the latest in garage doors and gates, visit Prestige Doors & Gates on ArchiPro here.