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lepew352

HELP: L Shaped Garage PROS? CONS? (doors facing different directions)

5 years ago

I am designing a house and need a 5 car garage. I have seen many designs with the garage doors in an L shape, where the cars would back out into the same space. Anyone have any real world experience with this design? Is it a bad design or a good design. I would like to know the pros and cons of this design. NOTE: I am not talking about an L shaped house with the garage on one side of the L and the house on the other. I am talking about an attached garage with two or more garage doors that are perpendicular to each other in an L shape creating an inside corner of garage doors where the cars, if backed out at the same exact time, would collide. Is this design annoying? What are the cons??? I can't find anything on the internet about this, but I know people have been living with them for some years now... Thanks in advance!

Comments (17)

  • 5 years ago



    Here is an example of what I am talking about....

  • 5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    We have a 4 car garage, 2 facing like that in your photo, but wider. Probably, no one would be using that little garage for an actual car, and our 2nd garage is used for a workout room. and storage.

  • 5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    I think that looks really odd. How practical it is IDK. The person with the largest garage space I know of has it behind the house, not attached and all 8 cars could back out without hitting each other.

  • 5 years ago

    That is an odd design as shown in that photo. I have a big suv and I'm good at maneuvering it in tight spaces, but a lot of people would have a hard time getting an average sized car in/out of that single garage.

    You are better off doing a courtyard with 3 bays on one side and 2 on the other. You see many of these in FL were the lots are not large and you need to fit the garages. Similar to this photo. Might not be a great design if you have to deal with snow, because you would have to remove it all out of the courtyard instead of just being able to push it to the side with some other garage/driveway layouts. The key with this layout is also to allow enough distance between the house and the first garage door.

    Custom Home in Pablo Creek Reserve 017 · More Info


  • PRO
    5 years ago

    This sort of garage design is not very functional if all doors are to be used for cars.

  • PRO
    5 years ago

    Why do you need a five care garage? What are those five cars? Who will be driving those cars? What does the site survey look like? What is the rest of the house program?

    If you were to build the garage without building the house, how would the garage design be?

  • 5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    If space and/or building code and/or budget are not an issue, consider an uncommon design -- a six car drive thru garage and/or car shelter as the front wing of the house with doors on both the left and right side -- a circle driveway that passes both in front of and through that front wing of the house - with that front wing wide enough for you to park three pairs of vehicles beneath the one roof by parking them in pairs -- front bumper to front bumper.

    A pair of exposed overhead center beams -- front to back -- and posts that support them, especially if painted a different color, could help identify a center walk path from the front of the structure to the house itself between the bumpers of the pairs of parked vehicles --and help a driver know when to "stop" the vehicles to not crowd the vehicle on the other side. You could even "assign" a specific door for a specific vehicle if confusion might otherwise occur.

    You'd be able to build a solid wall front (w/windows) facing the road and could even build a storage/tool room behind that front wall -- or just create a bump out for a tool work table countertop with storage above and beneath it.

    Make the garage doors tall enough and wide enough and ...

    ... you'd literally be able to tow a boat or trailer into the garage/carport and park it and then drive all the way through and out of it without unhitching it or needing to back up;

    ... and you'd likely be able to park a longer camper in one slot of that garage/carport as well.

    The sixth parking space could hold your BBQ grill and lawn furniture when you don't want them out in the weather. You could even open that sixth door and sit in the garage and watch the rain or the night sky ...

    My personal preference would be to separate that front garage/carport wing with the fumes and smells from five or more vehicles from the house by at least a screen porch or breezeway.

    Note: You could create a four car garage and a two car drive thru carport using four doors instead of six.

  • 5 years ago

    Totally depends on why you want it. For five cars getting regular use I would say no. For tinkering and working on one that is interior and for storage of other things seems totally reasonable. Your house your decision. If I needed five garages I would assume I also had a lot of space and would likely build this not attached to my home

  • 5 years ago

    There are quite a few houses in our neighborhood that have that kind of 3 car garage set up, except off to the side without a courtyard driveway. Like this:


    I would say none of them actually use the 1 car garage for daily parking use. They pull in and use the 2 car garage or don't use the garage at all and park in the driveway. The 1 car bay is used for "Sunday" cars, golf carts/UTV, workshop, exercise room, and/or storage.


    It's too tight and awkward to back out of daily, especially in a courtyard driveway where you need to back straight out then turn to get out of the drive.

  • 5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    @lepew352, you don't need to answer or justify those questioning your "need" of a 5 car garage. Doesn't matter what you plan to do with it or who is driving. A garage design should have all bays easily accessible for the average driver out there, keep it simple.

  • 5 years ago

    I wouldn’t mind a design like that, to have a garage for the bikes, burley, scooters, and tools.

  • 5 years ago
    last modified: 5 years ago

    Consider a couple of bays being tandem so you can reduce the doors. Unless you need 5 daily drivers. Usually the perpendicular garages are poorly done with very tight turning radii and no expectation of using that 3rd bay for a car.

    Do you need all 5 together? how will you enter the house from each bay if you separate them? will they enter through a single spot? Does anything need to be / want to be conditioned / partially conditioned?

    I would say your use case of these bays is an important piece of information.

  • 5 years ago

    There are 5 car garages in my neighborhood that came standard with the tract designed homes. In SoCal, people do all sorts of things with their garage space, and not often stuffing cars into them. Around me, I know of a man-cave, workout rooms, table-top pool room, workshop, and general storage area. Plus, in an area like ours where people buy for the good school districts, (and our neighborhood which has larger homes), you get a lot of teen drivers, as we have. Plus elderly living there (some of whom still drive), or guesthomes rented out to tenants. We currently have 5 drivers, so 5 cars, and we only garage one of them. A 5-car garage didn't come with our house, but we would welcome it.

    And, by the way, you only see a 2 car garage at our house, from the street, and it's set back. I now appreciate that we don't have a snout garage, nor a flush-to-the-front-of-the-house kind of garage.

  • 5 years ago

    The answer is lot dependent. Generally speaking, I believe that you should try to minimize the garages' visual impact on the streetscape and turning on or more of the garages can help achieve that. L-shaped configurations are common here in AZ and to the extent that you have space to maneuver vehicles, they offer a good solution.

  • 5 years ago

    An "appendage" garage is very commonly added to a main side-load garage. Usually site constraints are the governing issue. Using @User 's pic for illustration, the important components are making sure you have the space in the corner where the BLUE rectangle is. That allows the front to swing out when backing out of the inside corner garage all the way to street. That area can also serve as a daily backhouse entrance. The ORANGE rectangle inside is an efficient way for storage and to connect the garages rather than through the house.

    As an additional crutch if the site allows, a turn-around area of the driveway is good for 3-point turns so you can drive forward out of the driveway (shown in RED arrows but came out pretty sloppy, sorry). Shown with a bball court for my fun.

    There are many iterations that can happen in terms of layout, which garage is where (maybe 4 + 1 appendage, 3 + 2 detached with breezeway, 2+2+1 tandem, etc), whether it's a separated in-law suite, whatever. You will find little love here on Houzz for ANY garages, but if you need advice when more information is known post and some useful comments may actually trickle through.




  • PRO
    5 years ago

    Some good practice guidelines for garage and driveway design dimensions:





  • PRO
    5 years ago

    "You don't need to answer or justify those questioning your "need" of a 5 car garage. Doesn't matter what you plan to do with it or who is driving."

    You do if you want help from another architect.