A garage door’s main function is keeping what’s inside safe from prying eyes but these creative garage doors keep all eyes focused on the outside.

Sometimes great garage doors aren’t planned, they end up being thrust upon us. Such was the case of a corrugated garage door belonging to Imgur user elusive92. When the door’s owner discovered some unsightly and unskilled graffiti had disgraced his garage door one May morning in 2013, he didn’t get mad, he got even… even better, thank goodness all they did this time was graffiti but not everyones that lucky, if you’re not that fortunate and need your garage door repaired then checkout Garage Door Repair in Glendale Heights, IL. they’ll be able to help.

Taking the old adage “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” to heart, elusive92 hired local graffiti artist Lake13 to not only cover the anonymous scrawling but replace it with a work of graffiti art – with the emphasis on the art part. We think he succeeded rather well, don’t you?

Community Communion

“Every time I drive by this house, I marvel,” admits Flickr user William Keckler., who titles his photo taken in early December of 2012 “The Holy Sacrament of the Garage Door”. No telling what’s parked inside… perhaps the Popemobile.

“To The Broke-Ass Batcave!”

Looking to produce an ultra-low-budget Batman flick? Well look no further than South St. in Philadelphia, where one creatively painted corrugated roll-up garage door says so much with just two colors. Eric from Geekadelphia snapped the bargain-basement Batcave door way back in July of 2008 – let’s hope it hasn’t been painted over by Alfred since then.

Arts Of The West

The above creative composition was included in a portfolio of garage doors by RC Cabinets & Closets as an example of a “garage door decal”. We’ve seen garage door decals and frankly, this ain’t no garage door decal. The above tableau doesn’t appear to be a decal at all – note how the painted portions extend off the garage door itself. Odds are this exquisite door is a unique creation as well.

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Close Calls 12 Breathtakingly Creative Garage Doors

This gorgeous collection of photographic montages highlights regional similarities and differences between types and styles of door and window designs all across Europe, starting with Porto, Portugal:

The Alps:

Santa Susana, Spain:

Sesimbra, Portugal:

London, England:

Burano, Italy:

Andre Goncalves, a photographer from Lisbon, set about creating this catalog of colors and textures with his ‘Windows of the World’ series (mostly by city and region), then expanded to develop ‘Doors of the World’ as well (sorted by country):

Romania:

England:

Portugal:

Individually, a single door might not say much about a city or country, but taken together: patterns emerge, from tile work around doors to color preferences and decorative touches.

Barcelona, Spain:

Montemor-o-Novo, Portgual:

Evora, Portugal:

Venice, Italy:

Bucharest, Romania:

Lisbon, Portugal:

Covering two sides of a three-story building in Rome, this ground-to-roof artwork is massive, even by the standards of a big-thinking street artist like BLU used to large-scale works.

Various window and door openings are incorporated into colorful characters with a” rainbow range of painted personalities,” some of which play off of the existing architectural details or structural quirks of the building.

BLU lives in Bologna and has been active in the street art scene since 1999 – he is well-known for his large-scale works around the world. Like Banksy, he keeps his identity a closely-guarded secret.

About the artist: “His graphic mania is directly proportional to the epic scale of his murals. His paintings seem to interpret the architectural language of public spaces and reinvent them into new shapes. Thus, his murals are never detached from the places where they were conceived because Blu is a painter in the landscape, urban or industrial. He always tries to communicate with the society which inhabits those spaces, searching for the uniqueness of each place.”

Ready to hob nob with some high class doorknobs? These dozen daring twists on a traditionally utilitarian theme will unlock your perceptions of what room decor could and should be.

The First Modern Doorknob

(images via: eHow and Rest and Restlessness)

Doorknobs… a most common, everyday appurtenance that’s seen little or no improvement since the age of the ancient Egyptians? Wrong! It wasn’t until December 10th of the year 1878 (AD, not BC) that the US Patent Office approved a patent for the first practical “door holding device”: the complete doorknob as we know it today. Perhaps even more surprising (considering the era) is that the doorknob patent was awarded to an African-American named Osbourn Dorsey. Very little is known about Dorsey other than he had a certain aptitude for door-related devices – he’s also credited with inventing the doorstop.

Molecular Doorknob Gets A Round

(images via: Sherle Wagner and Outblush)

Sherle Wagner‘s Molecular Doorknob was a 2005 design exercise in polished nickel plating that features a half-dozen spherical “atoms” in close association, much like the shape of an actual molecule made by combining individual atoms. The Molecular Doorknob makes one think… about which sphere the user should turn to open the door.

Illumi-Knob Lights Your Way

(images via: Gizmag and Absolutely New)

Think doorknobs are the epitome of low-tech? Think again: the Illumi-Knob may even be smarter than you! Well, at least in the middle of the night when you’re stumbling around the bedroom searching for the knob of the bedroom door. You can’t see the knob but the knob senses you, thanks to a futuristic passive infra-red sensor that can detect movement within 10 feet. Once the knob knows you’re coming (how’s that for scary?), a pair of LED rings softly light up, guiding you to the exit. Each Illumi-Knob holds 3 AAA batteries to power the sensor and its modernistic design acts to turn any standard doorknob into an easy to grasp lever. Look for it in stores by the spring of 2010.

Rapping On The Door? Ice Cube Doorknobs

(images via: We Covet and Sydney DiaryStar)

There’s not much that can be said about these Ice Cube Doorknobs, other than they look mighty cool with their squared-off design complemented by carved grass hardware. It’s not known for certain whether rapper/actor (raptor?) Ice Cube has these, but really, who’s going to walk up and ask him about his doorknobs?

Art Glass Doorknobs

(images via: Toxiferous, InventorSpot and OOTB)

Out Of The Blue Design Studio will knock your socks off with literally dozens of spectacularly beautiful doorknobs crafted with care from exquisite art glass. The available designs range from natural images of leaves, flowers and even a globe, to more abstract themes that serve to focus your attention – and likely the sun’s rays on a bright clear day. These cooler than cool doorknobs look so good you’ll be tempted to forbid people from touching them for fear of leaving fingerprints.

Hand Blown Glass Doorknobs

(images via: Design Hole)

Tracy Glover melds artistic sensibility with everyday practicality in an ethereal series of hand blown glass doorknobs. One may wonder if designing a high-traffic object like a doorknob in possibly fragile blown glass is really a good idea. The beauty of Glover’s doorknobs speaks for itself – but the bathroom door might not be the best place to install them.

Doorknob Art

(images via: Hap Moore)

The art of the doorknob? Why not – doorknobs present an almost cameo-like circular surface that many 19th century artists and decorators have found perfectly amenable to the styles of the times. Though old-fashioned doorknob art has fallen from grace, collectors have acted to preserve this unique art form by saving, trading and auctioning the best examples of the genre.

Glacial Stone Doorknobs

(images via: Hap Moore)

Cold, hard stone, ground down from immense rocky boulders by mammoth sheets of ice a mile or more thick… then outfitted with brass hardware and installed on your door. If the thought of grasping nature’s bounty worn smooth by the action of wind, water and ice over thousands of years sounds appealing – and indeed it does – these roughly matched sets of glacial stone doorknobs from Skipping Stones are exactly what you’ve been looking for.

Handshake Doorknobs

(images via: Toxiferous, Garden Web and LikeCool)

Imagine you’re at a stranger’s house for the first time and as chance would have it, nature called… following the instructions to head “down the hall, second door on the right”, you arrive at the portal in question and are greeted – literally – by a handshake doorknob. Various thoughts may then come to mind, especially “I shouldn’t have had that last beer.” It could be worse: the handshake doorknob could be on the INSIDE of the bathroom instead of on the outside.

The Knob Light

(images via: Yanko Design and Craziest Gadgets)

It had to happen at some point: somebody notices the similarity of doorknobs and light bulbs, then designs The Knob Light, a doorknob that looks like – and acts like – a light bulb. The somebody who did this deed is South Korea’s Jeong-Sun Park. Rumors are the runner-up was an 8-year-old kid named Kevin who, being home alone and with nothing much else to do, tried the same thing using an actual 100-watt light bulb that was always on.

Smart Doorknob Is Smart

(images via: PC News and Yanko Design)

Dumb as a doorknob? Not THIS doorknob, called The Doorknob Condition by its designer, Arnaud Lapierre. An innovative pulley mechanism retracts the outside doorknob to be flush with the door’s facing, thus foiling any uninvited “guests” who attempt to enter.

Primeval Doorknob

(image via: Roxane)

The raw earthiness of the above image – and the doorknob which it depicts – are evocative of a time in the distant past before industrialization standardized utilitarian devices like doorknobs. This one, located somewhere in Scotland, looks as if it was laboriously hand-carved by the same forgotten ancients who built Stonehenge… and probably from the same type of stone.

Doorknobs have taken their knocks, being as they have often been the doormats of home design – no offense to doormats. Hopefully this entry will be the key that opens the door to the many ways doorknobs can turn the mundane into the magnificent.

In our rush to renovate our dream house with the craziest and most creative that modern design can conjure up, we’re liable to forget how we enter and leave it. If you are thinking that modern door design is a matter of open-and-shut conventional thinking, these 14 examples should put you in the right frame of mind.

(Image via: Tobias Frenzel)

If ever a door was perfect for university student halls of residence, this is it. Once shut, the Ping Pong Door‘s middle section swings down into perhaps the most neighborly door you’ll ever own (if your neighbor likes ping pong, that is). Expect this concept to expand to encompass every tabletop game under the sun – air hockey next, please.

(Images via: Gizmodo and Tanaka)

In the future, all doors will automatically slide aside as we approaching (so says Star Trek, and who are we to argue?). However, here’s one that Gene Rodenberry didn’t see coming: a door that moulds to the shape of your body as you pass through it. The Tanaka Sliding Door is a crowd-pleaser (watch the reaction of the people in this video) and poses the fascinating question: do we really need our doors any bigger than we are?

(Images via: Fluxxlab and Inhabitat)

The Wachowski brothers were right – human beings are sources of tappable energy. It may seem a decidely weird way to generate electricity, but the kinetic energy spent in pushing a door open can be diverted into potential in charging up a battery or feeding electricity back into a power supply. This is the principle behind Fluxxlab’s Revolution Door and the Natuurcafé La Port – and now this idea has become reality, it seems far from weird.

(Images via: Apartment Therapy)

Interior designer Lotty Lindeman seems unimpressed with doors – and based on the above design, we sympathize. After all, when the walls swing open as fast as you can say “Open Sesame!“, where exactly do doors belong?

(Images via: Trendhunter)

Now, exploring new doorway mediums is all very well – but is this daring or just a touch lunatic? The Waterfall Door is formed of a sheet of permanently cascading water that is collected in a trough and cycled round and round the frame. Designer Danial Harper seems to be aiming at the mesmerising vibe of standing behind a natural waterfall – but would you be happy with a thorough soaking everytime you leave the house? A bakingly hot climate seems a must for this one.

(Image via:  )

You value your privacy – but you want a nicely daylit room. The eternal dilemma, and not one that doors usually feature in.  Enter the Light + Air Door. At the pull of a latch, your door is suddenly as perforated as a teabag, allowing the big wide world to come streaming in.

(Images via: Seven02Design and Designboom)

Who is at the door? That is a question these two designers never want to hear again. Dominic Muren’s award-winning Melody Door works like a vertical xylophone, allowing you to tap out your very own signature tune on a full octave of available notes. The Pianobell is designed for the less musically-minded, presenting a more familiar and accessible piano keyboard to recite your arrival.

(Image via: Art Lebedev Studio and ThinkGeek )

Fancy a challenge? If you’re not afraid of keeping visitors waiting, the Defendius door latch – which can safely be filed under “eyecatching” but maybe not so much under “practical” – is a key element to your dream door. Made of beautiful titanium alloy, this is ideal for letting door-to-door salesmen know what an inconvenience they are (and with a bit of luck, by the time you get the door open, they will have gone).

(Images via:  Designophony and Yanko Design)

There’s a particular indignity in fumbling for the light switch just so you can find the door. With a little 20-20 hindsight, the solution is obvious: light the door up. These glowing doornobs are a happy marriage of style and practicality: the Brighthandle adds a touch of lightsaber to the proceedings, while the Knobbly Light opts for a quirkier approach (and no, it won’t burn your hand).

(Images via: Yanko Design)

When work deadlines are pressing and the Do Not Disturb sign simply isn’t getting the message across, you can ensure the world and his dog cannot burst in on you – by removing the doorhandle. The Disappearing Doorknob lives up to its name when you pull on your side of the handle (thankfully, the designers recognised the potential for mischief and made it work in just the one direction).

(Images via: Designboom)

And last but not least, a door you can only see through if you’re standing in exactly the right spot.  If you’re further than 50 centimetres from the inside of the FOCUS Door, a curious milky fog creeps in from the edges of the glass, reducing your vision to a transparent central strip. Move left or right, and that strip moves to the opposite side of the door to you. Like the Disappearing Doorknob It’s another door to keep the world at arm’s length – in this case, consigning it to “out of sight, out of mind”!