Sectional Vs Roller Garage Doors

The roller shutter garage door can be fitted to nearly every shape of garage opening either inside, inbetween or in front of the aperture. And, with no internal tracking, the door provides a neat, compact style operation.
Go to our Guide to Roller Garage Doors > for further information if the roller door is your preferred choice. 

Door Designs

The Roller Garage Door has the one design only – horizontal lines, the only options are in colour surface finishes and very subtle differences in the curtain slats used from different manufacturers or in the case of the steel non insulated continuous curtain roller door even smaller differences.

The Sectional Garage Door in contrast has many panel designs to choose from and almost any colour paint finish you can think of as well as woodgrain and metallic laminate finishes. The door panel front face can be specified in smooth silkgrain, woodgrain, micrograin, stucco and Decograin (laminate foil coatings) for the ultimate in individual design for your home. There are also some real designer type finishes such as corten or brass, etc.

A domestic roller garage door from any major UK manufacturer normally has a maximum width of about 5.2 metres and 3 metres high although some will go up to 6 metres wide. The sectional doors manufactured in double skinned foam filled steel panels can be manufactured up to a massive 8 metres wide and 3 metres high or 5 metres high if you use industrial specification mechanism. These huge sizes can also be a spring assisted manual operation if required where the roller garage door constructed from double skinned slats has a maximum width in manual operation of about 3 metres wide and always has to always be electrically operated over this width. All roller and sectional garage doors can be made to measure for a perfect fit.

Roller Doors

Roller garage doors are generally very secure except the single skinned steel version in its basic form. Double skinned aluminium roller doors are generally more secure and the SWS Seceuroglide Excel aluminium roller door even has a level 1 secured by design insurance rating and when installed correctly will provide high levels of resistance to attempted forced entries at all sizes. Security is quite a big issue with roller doors and many do have a weak point in that they can lack proper mechanisms at the top of the curtain to sufficiently hold the door secure and prevent a forced opening from the bottom. The leading manufacturers use various methods to overcome this.

Roller garage doors can only have a limited amount of small glazing cut out sections in the individual curtain slats and whilst this does give some vision and light, it is minimal and not possible in the continuous steel roller door curtain door.

Sectional garage doors in every material and panel design offered can have small, medium or large window sections fitted with extra glazing bar designs if required in single and double glazed specifications. Arched designs and modern stainless steel designer windows are also readily available now to create a real statement on your home.

Many sectional garage door designs now have high quality matching front entrance doors to give a perfect co ordinated look to your home.

For an electric operated roller door the basic override system when faced with a power cut is an internal winding manual mechanism to wind the door up through a geared section on the motor and the same in reverse to close. This does take time to perform and requires some effort and co ordination so is not ideal if you have any sort of disability or shoulder problem.  The Hormann and Garador roller door do have a full release from the external fitted motor and a spring balance allowing simple push up and pull down operation when released.

A sectional garage door is always primarily a manually operated door first and the electric motors are optional so when fitted to a door and requiring releasing in a power failure it is a simple matter of releasing the motor towing arm from inside or outside by the handle or a key mechanism and then the secgtional door can be lifted and closed as it would if it was a manual door, with the assistance of spring balance.

Both the roller and sectional door motors can also have emergency battery back up systems installed to give several electric operations without mains power available. These should be carefully considered if you do have any physical disability or probelms with your shoulders or back.