If you’re buying a garage door this fall, you’ll be faced with several decisions that you probably never had to make before. Before you call your local garage door dealer to make that purchase, here are some of the new decisions that you need to face.

The design decision:

Remember the old adage that the front door is the most important design element in the home? It’s not true any more.

In most homes today, the visual impact of the garage door is many times greater than that of the front door. Studies have even proven that your garage door design can affect the appraisal value of your home.

Today, manufacturers offer hundreds of new, unique and stunning looks. Design experts recommend that you choose a door design that blends in well with your home design, complementing its overall appearance. To do that, match the door with your home’s exterior colors, textures and patterns.

To help you with your design decision, the garage door industry has created the free consumer site www.garagewownow.com, which contains dozens of photos of the latest garage doors from many manufacturers. Plus, most manufacturer websites now feature a “door designer” that lets you see how different designs will look on an uploaded photo of your own garage.

New opener decisions:

The garage door and the opener are two separate items, but they are often purchased together. And since today’s openers offer many more features and accessories than ever before, you’ll have several new decisions to make.

• AC vs. DC: Openers with DC (direct current) motors, which were rare 10 years ago, are now widely available. DC and AC motors are both durable and reliable, but DC motors are quieter, and they allow the door to soft-start and soft-stop, instead of clanging to an abrupt stop.

• Accessories: Here, the decisions are many. For example, you can now operate and monitor your garage door from your smartphone. You can also get a battery backup unit, a real lifesaver in a power outage.

When you consider motion detection, music speakers, mini transmitters, automatic deadbolt locks, LED lighting, external keypads and more, you’ll realize how far openers have come.

New thinking on insulation:

Insulation isn’t a new decision, but there is new thinking to consider. “The garage acts as a ‘buffer zone,’ much like the vestibule to a restaurant or a grocery store,” said Joe Hetzel, P.E., technical director for the garage door manufacturers’ association.

“An insulated garage door makes it easier to control the heating and cooling costs for the home.”

This new “buffer zone” thinking considers garage door insulation as a must. Fortunately, insulation typically pays for itself. Dow Chemical recently reported that, for every $100 you invest in an insulation project, you generally get a return of $117 in recouped energy costs.

“Once you get an insulated door, you never go back to uninsulated,” said Ed Hermanns, a door dealer in New Jersey and president of the International Door Association. “Most of our customers today buy an insulated door, and that number seems to increase every year.”

You might be buying a new garage door out of necessity, but as it turns out, it’s a smart purchase. An upscale garage door replacement delivers the highest return on investment for all upscale remodeling projects in the new 2017 Cost vs. Value Report from Remodeling Magazine.

So, while you have a few decisions yet to make, you’ve already made the good choice to get a new garage door. After you add the latest designs and technology, you’ll have a chance to admire all your choices every time you pull in the driveway.