Carriage style doors are generally all built on a base panel made of a 1" to 1 3/8" x 2 1/2" to 3" wood frame. High quality doors (Hahn Woodworking) make the frame out of a decay resistant hardwood (Meranti mahogany, etc.), medium quality doors (Designer Doors) use Douglas Fir, and the lower quality doors (Overhead) use hemlock. Designer doors makes two models A & B in order to better compete with the brands above and below. The basic frame is faced with with 1/4" plywood usually on both sides (Designer only on inside). The plywwod is often luan mahogany but some is "super-ply"(Designer) The best doors prime all sides of all components before assembly (Hahn) some only after assembly (Designer) and some only partially (Overhead). Wood styles and rails and T&G paneling are added to the outer face of this basic door unit. Hahn uses clear Spanish cedar full 1" thick styles & rails butted against 3/4" T&G paneling with biscuit glued joinery and face-grain wood plugs over recessed screws into the framing. They claim 200 screws per door. Each panel is assembled separately. Designer uses clear western red cedar 5/8" thick styles and rails over-laid on top of 9/16" thick T&G paneling with putty over recessed screws . The entire door is built and then cut into separate panels. Overhead uses clear western red cedar 3/4" thick and T&G paneling glued and blind nailed. The total thickness varies from 2 1/2" to 2 7/8". Of course the front edge of this door assembly aligns (in both directions) with the inside corner of the trimmed door opening so the tracks must be set to accommodate this thickness. Polystyrene foam board insulation fills the door panel cavities. Some doors use the extruded kind (Styrofoam) and some use the expanded type (white beadboard). R values range from 5 to 7.7 The more expensive custom doors (Hahn & Designer) will consider a 9'x8' high door to be a standard size. The cheaper doors usually consider 9'x7' high door to be standard. Some provide chain drive openers, others provide belt drive openers. Some use Chamberlain Co. but Overhead has their own brand. Some provide a 3/4 hp motor, others 1/2 hp. Some use overhead torsion springs, others extension springs along the rails. There are too many glass options to describe. Some use a heavier galvanized steel track. Some offer powder coated tracks. Designer has weep holes, the others don't. All of the doors are installed by the manufacturers or their authorized agents. I would guess the approximate cost of a 9'x8' door, installed, would range from $5,000 to $2,000 assuming decorative paneling and glass. These manufacturers use different details at the horizontal panel joints with differing degrees of overlap. I'll post the details if I ever find them. Of course the manufacturers may have changed their designs in the past two years.

It's interesting how people differ on this issue. Our house came with standard, builder-grade, uninsulated, 4-panel garage doors with windows in the second panel from the top. There are no other windows in our garage, so I thought the windows in the garage doors were fabulous. In fact, I wanted even more light so we replaced the original doors with 3-panel carriage-style doors with even bigger windows last year. It's great to have so much natural light in the garage during the day. We don't have to turn on a light and we can see outside without ever opening the door. It's funny though - when we first moved into our (new) housing development 13 years ago, many of our neighbors had blacked-out their garage windows. There was even an article in the HOA newsletter about products you could buy for that purpose. I used to joke with my husband about how the neighbors must have meth labs in their garages because I couldn't understand why someone would block perfectly good windows when everyone can see everything in your garage whenever you open the door/s, which is at least a couple times a day for us. Besides, with the slope of our driveways, you have to be taller to see into our garage than to look out of our garage. In any case, most of our neighbors have removed the material from their garage windows, so I guess they're feeling more secure now - or they moved their meth labs to another location :-)

Not sure about your level of confidence in wood working - but Fine Home Building had a great article back in March about building Carriage style garage doors at a fraction of the price purchasing a set would be. You would be able to then, of course, make them whatever style you wanted them to be!

I feel like everyone with greige homes and darker trims has black windows or shutters at least, so I wasn't sure if my white windows everywhere will look good with the dark rock and darker trim (well again, I originally planned on white trim). I did like the black garage door you had in the pic above with the large numbers very much. This one of many choices and I just feel overwhelmed! You have so many great ideas on the garage, I just need to finalize this trim and make a decision ; )