It's fairly common for garage door panels to become damaged — accidentally driving your car into your garage door is one sure-fire way to do it. If you've damaged one or more panels on your garage door, you're probably wondering if the panels can be replaced or if you'll need to get a whole new garage door. Thankfully, it's possible to replace individual panels on a garage door. However, it's not always the best option. To find out whether replacing an individual panel or replacing your entire door is the best option for you, ask yourself the following questions:

Can You Find a Replacement Panel?

A replacement panel needs to have the exact same weight and dimensions as the panel it's replacing. This means you'll need to order replacement panels for your specific model of garage door. While garage door manufacturers do provide replacement panels, they often stop making them once a model is no longer on the market.

The end result is that you'll likely encounter difficulty finding a replacement panel if your garage door is more than ten years old. When that happens, replacing your entire garage door is the only option.

What Damaged Your Garage Door?

What caused your garage door panel to become damaged? If it was hit by a baseball or a bicycle, the damage may have been limited to only the panel. However, a garage door that has been hit by a car has likely suffered more extensive damage — cars are incredibly heavy, so they carry a lot of momentum even when they're moving at slow speeds. If your garage door was hit by a car, the extreme force may have caused it to become warped. In this case, you'll need to replace the entire door.

What's the Cost of Replacing Your Panels?

The panels on a garage door make up a substantial portion of its cost, which means that replacement panels are not cheap. If you're replacing two or more damaged panels, then it wouldn't cost much more to simply replace your entire garage door. If your garage door is old and is due for replacement soon, you may simply want to opt for garage door replacement and not bother replacing individual panels. It makes more financial sense to replace your garage door now rather than replacing individual panels and then buying another garage door a few years later.

To sum it up, replacing individual panels is only worth it when you have a newer garage door, the damage is fairly minor and you're only replacing a single panel. In all other cases, it makes more sense to go for a full garage door replacement.

Whether you decide to replace only a single panel or replace the entire garage door, call a professional garage door repair service to do the job. Replacing a garage door panel requires you to temporarily remove its torsion springs, which are held under extreme tension — removing them improperly can cause them to snap violently, which can cause serious injury to you. Keep yourself safe and have a professional garage door repair service perform the job.