The Garage on the Front/Garage on the Side Conundrum

In my build, the garage doors are locked in at this point as
facing the front, ie, the road.

I have discovered that at least here on Garden Web, this is
considered a serious no-no when it comes to home design. But I just had to step back and consider
this further. I mean, I’ve spent 60
years of my life without this being a concern of mine, but here we are!

1: Driving around my
neighborhood, the homes with garages around the side were no more or no less
attractive than those with the garage doors in front. The only thing to my eye that made a garage
door in front unattractive in and of itself, is when owners color it an accent
color. Front doors work well with accent
colors – garage doors, due to their large size, do not.

2: Of the three
houses I’ve lived in with my parents, all the garage doors were in the front of
the house. It seems normal.

3: My current house
has the garage door on the side. I’ve
never felt this to be better or worse than any other plan. This was just what worked out with the given lot.

So, I just took a ride for about 3 miles near my current
house and took a tally of front garages to side garages. On my way to my destination (a farmer’s
market), I simply noted if any of these homes looked unattractive to me, no
matter garage placement. Most of the 3
miles involves mid-to-upper middle class housing (my own road is more towards lower
middle class housing).

On the drive back, I focused on counting on just one side of
the street (so I wouldn’t impede traffic).
I didn’t count houses with detached garages (of which there at least
ten), or ones too far off the road (in New England, there are lots of trees and
bushes, and hilly wavy driveway entryways) to see what was going on. There are actually a very few houses in the
area with no garages at all, typically way older ones with somewhat extended
outside parking. They weren’t counted, either.

Tally results:

23 houses with front doors and garage doors in the front.

21 houses with front doors in front, garage doors on the
side.

4 houses with “front” doors on the side, and garage door in
the front. (Three of these were next to
each other.)

Only one house with the garage door in front looked “ugly”
to me. And I don’t think it was just the
garage… (The four with “front” doors on the side merely looked “strange”, but
not ugly.)

Thoughts about these observations:

1: Some lots are
small enough that a side garage is not going to work. However, many of these lots are large enough
(mid-upper middle class housing) that a side entryway would work.

2: This is New
England. Some side entry possibilities
for a driveway would mean in winter a homeowner would end up slipping down
their driveway, not be able to bank for the turn into their garage, and end up
topsy-turvy in the backyard of the neighbor down below. (Many of these homes are built on a
hillside.)

Personal conclusions, and I am aware that the overall
gestalt of GW participants seems to vary from mine (which is why I am posting
this):

Not all the homes with front-facing garages HAD to be
front-facing, although some did. This did not detract from “curb
appeal” as I see it.

The only “ugly” (to me) home with a front-facing garage
looked penned in by zoning/lot lines.

BUILD WHAT WORKS FOR YOU, AND FITS TO YOUR LOT AND YOUR
NEEDS. Don’t accent the garage, but be
proud of it. Don’t follow trends just to
follow trends, but hey, if half the homes around you have the garage doors
facing front, they can’t all be doing something wrong!