I considered style, function and cost. I like carriage style doors so we looked at those in several materials. We ended up with insulated steel for budget purposes. If budget was no constraint the fiberglass doors and felt nicer up close. The fiberglass "wood" doors were virtually maintenance free compared to real wood. For our job, the garage doors were doubled if we upgraded to fiberglass and it just wasn't important enough to shift $$ away from something else.

MFatt- I think what surprised me most about garage doors in general, was when I realized a lot of the nice wood doors I was seeing were not wood at all- which in our hot and humid climate really makes sense. On our rounds through the new neighborhood, the plain painted steel and the fiberglass or ultragrained steel doors looked like they were holding up better. I love the look of the real wood close up though- terribly costy though they are.

I like wood doors too for the first couple years. We are in the PNW and they look pretty bad after a fashion. The fiberglass are pretty good looking, even up close. I haven't seen real wood doors going in pretty much anywhere anymore, even higher end houses.

I put up a cheap used steel door that I got on craigslist as a temporary measure. I haven't decided what to do yet. We're on an extremely tight budget, so it's function all the way, but I would like to make it look better eventually. I might add a wood facing on the existing door to make it look better. Whatever I do will be painted, but I'd like it to look more authentic than stamped tin. Maybe if I splurged on PVC instead of wood? They make beadboard sheets in cellular PVC, plus 1X trim.

I had to have a front-facing garage due to our topography, but it's a small one-car, and I pushed it back a couple feet from the front of the house to minimize the garage. The house is Craftsman, and I'd like it to look like the garage was added on, since it 'originally' wouldn't have had one.

Hi Mush-
You are so skilled at crafting things, you could probably do just about anything with your steel door- which is a definite advantage when choosing a final style for your door. You aren't limited to the standard selections which come ready-made.

These are the doors we used. Ours have windows and escutcheon hardware. For our south facing driveway, this seemed to be a rational choice. They are insulated steel.

But these are very beautiful:-)