Garage guise

by Metropol | October 28, 2026 8:34 am

Now you see it, now you don’t: flush-finished and cladding-matched garage doors are the next big thing in new-build homes, gracing Canterbury winners in the Architectural Design Awards for 2026.

Two homes in this year’s Canterbury shortlist for the Resene Architectural Design Awards show off the sleek, contemporary feel of flush-finished garage doors, where clean lines don’t disturb the cladding feature of a home’s facade.

Like a continuous exterior, flush-finished garage doors appear ‘invisible’ – the seamless, invisible look blends into architecture and hides where the door starts and ends until it opens. Removing the visual dominance, the new trend means garage doors and cladding, panels or materials continue uninterrupted.

Clean and polished with an almost-invisible garage door, Box House in Cracroft by Ashton Wright and Chris Wheeler of Hierarchy Group. Photographed by Sarah Rowlands.

St Barnabas in Fendalton by Sam Connell of Figure & Ground, where architectural lines and protruding eaves stand out as the garage door takes a backseat. Photographed by Sarah Rowlands.

Source URL: https://metropol.co.nz/garage-guise/