The Best Types of Garage Door Locks for Wooden Garage Doors
Security in our homes is key, and ensuring good locking mechanisms on our garage is an integral part of keeping ours homes safe. Most metal garage doors have integrated locking facilities integrated, but with wooden garage door locks, you can choose the lock that works best for you and customise yours accordingly. If you are looking to invest in a new wooden garage door, check out our garage doors page where you can learn about our bespoke made doors with integrated locking systems.
If you have a wooden garage door, there are number of excellent locks available, with some of the most secure options that you can use for your garage being the following tailored locks designed specifically for these types of doors. (It is theoretically possible to fit more modern automatic locks, however from extensive experience in the industry, we’ve found these often have problems and malfunction, so do not recommend these or fit them on our garages.)
Firstly, let’s go through three of the main types of locks that can be used on your wooden garage door, along with our recommendation for the best garage door lock to use.
1. The Padbolt
The Padbolt is an old, but secure form of lock that can be used on your wooden garage door. The padbolt consists of a simple bolt lock that can be secured with a padlock. The best thing about the padbolt as a garage door lock is that they come in a wide range of sizes. If you are working with a larger budget, you can opt for the larger, more secure types of padbolts. You can also increase the effectiveness of your padbolt by investing in a more secure type of padlock. If you have a secure padlock, then your garage is secure.
The biggest downside to the padbolt is that it can only be locked from one side of the door. If you place your padbolt on the external side of the door with a padlock to secure the bolt, then you can’t lock the garage from inside and use an internal door to gain access to your home. The same is true vice versa, in that an internal lock limits your access. This means that ultimately despite being a strong option, the padbolt is not the most flexible type of lock and may not suit those who need to access their garage regularly. Read on to find out about some of the locks with more flexible functionality. Check out this useful guide from Bunnings showing you how a padbolt lock is fitted.
2. The Rim Lock
The rim lock is so named since the lock is placed on the edge (rim) of your door. It comes with its own locking mechanism so you don’t have to get a padlock for the lock. You can get these in single or double locking systems, meaning that they can work from one or both sides of the door, offering a much more practical solution for garage door locking. Our recommended garage door lock is a type of rim lock, which we will get to in a moment.
3. The Mortise Deadlock
The mortise deadlock is considered to a very secure traditional garage door lock, and like the rim lock, once fitted on the garage door, it can be opened from both sides of the door with a key. There are two types of mortise deadlocks, the 3 lever and the 5 lever options. The five lever option is more secure, and there is a sashlock variation which adds door handles and a latch which can keep the door closed even if you haven’t locked it with a key.
The downside of mortise locks is that they don’t always accommodate timber movement, so in the wet weather conditions our country frequently provides, these locks aren’t always ideal.
These are the most usual garage door locks that are known of in the industry, however we personally use and recommend a double-locking long throw lock.
The best garage door lock for wooden garage doors
Double-locking long throw locks are a type of rim lock, and are ideal for timber in a British climate since they are designed to accommodate movement and expansion. Compared to some of the other traditional locks available this also is one of the most flexible and functional since it allows you to lock and unlock your garage door from both sides of your garage door.
This lock is also highly suitable for wooden garden gates and side gates.
We hope you found our guide to the different types of locks available for wooden garage doors useful, and if you are curious about finding out more, do get in touch with our team! For more information on our wooden gates, click here.