Is DIY garage door insulation even worth it? In my opinion, yes. Especially if you work out of your garage, like I do. I used materials you can find at Home Depot, Lowe’s or Amazon. It’s very affordable and easy to do. However, keep in mind that insulating your garage door is a step in the process. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you are considering insulating your garage door.
#1 – Don’t expect that your garage will feel cool as if you had AC in there. If you want your garage to feel “cool” you actually need to add an AC unit of some sort. 🙂
#2 – If you add AC to your garage and want it to be efficient, you need to not only insulate your garage doors, you also need to make sure your garage doors are sealed all the way around. In some cases that means replacing the garage door seals located at the bottom and the sides of the door and doorway.
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Supplies Used for this Project
Scissors to cut panels to size
I have 2 garage doors. One is 18′ x 8′ and the other is 8′ x 8′. I thought 2 garage door insulation kits would be enough but it wasn’t which is why I ended up buying the Reflective Insulation rolls. In total I spent about $200 in materials for my 2 garage doors. But if I were to do this DIY again, I would definitely just buy the large rolls of Foil Insulation because my garage panels were all different sizes, and the pre-cut foil panels in the kit were not long enough to cover the larger garage door. I ended up using scraps to cover the sides and then bought Reflective tape to cover the smaller gaps. Here is the final result!
Why I Chose to Insulate my Garage Doors
Insulating my garage doors is a step towards getting my workspace to the point where I can install a mini split and make the area a bit more comfortable for me to work in. Remember, insulated garage doors and AC go hand in hand. One will not work as well without the other. At the time of this post it is blazing hot in Texas and my garage is still warm. We are averaging temps of about 108 on a daily basis with “feels like temps of 115” and my garage thermometer is reading about 105 on the hottest days. And even though 105 sounds high, it’s still better than 115. My garage literally felt like an oven. I would say 10 degrees is a win for a $200 investment and a lot cheaper than buying 2 insulated garage doors over $4k.
Are there better materials that I could have used in conjunction with the foil panels? Yes. But I chose to only do reflective insulation because I don’t want to weigh down my garage doors. We open and close them quite a bit since we do store our cars in there and I didn’t want to risk putting too much weight on the springs of the door. The goal here was a budget upgrade that would help reduce the temperature in the garage on these hot summer days. For $200 I think it was worth it!
You can find the Instagram reel of this installation process here. Make sure to check out my other blog posts for detailed tutorials on other easy DIY projects, like how to build an easy stool! And as always if you have any questions, feel free to reach out! Happy DIYing!
