The flat roof of the Nakhshabs’ energy-efficient home is topped with photo-voltaic panels. It is the first single-family LEED Gold–certified residence in San Diego.

The owners are car collectors, especially of “vintage American Mustangs,” Simpson says, so a nearly 23-foot-wide garage door opening was created at the rear of the building to access a space made for six prized rides.

On a side wall, sleek barn doors open to reveal a storage area for bikes. Stairs near the garage entrance, which features a door from Renlita, lead to a vaulted loft that was originally intended as an exercise room but is now used by Rakesh as an office.

Designed by Jagoda, the door swings open to fit in front of a bookshelf.

A cedar clad garage door.

The darker gray garage door offers a chromatic and textural contrast to the concrete shell.

A new garage is topped with a master suite and clad in James Hardie Scyon Linea boards painted a dark color, Dulux Monument.

Green roofs are aesthetically pleasing and have multiple positive environmental benefits, even if they are small in terms of square footage. Here, a green roof blooms atop the detached garage of a home.

A wood-clad garage sits adjacent to the home.

Atop the carport is a Hopper table and shade by Extremis.

When not in use during winter, the tub is hidden from the home’s view. The entrance has a sheltered overhang for car parking.

The pop of orange as an accent color is picked up in the carport.

RaceDeck Garage Flooring is engineered to turn your garage into a showplace while withstanding even the toughest garage environments. Transform your garage in hours with RaceDeck’s patented garage tile system.

Interior of attached garage with car charging stations built in.

The windows themselves come from Lumisystem.

A curved staircase brings an organic touch to an otherwise linear design.

The steps and exterior are lined with Finnish brick; a mix of vertical and horizontal patterns add visual interest.

To allude to the nearby ocean, the architects designed a seaweed patterned for the interior of the garage door (seen here raised). It successfully reads like a leather padded wall and makes “the cube” feel that much more customized.

The garage behind the concrete wall.

PMI Parking Garage, Washington, DC

When Libby May and Eoghan Mahony purchased a 1950s post-and-beam house in Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Canyon, they envisioned someday transforming the garage and adjoining workshop into livable space, with an office for each of them and a family room they could share with their sons, Wes, 14, and Duncan, 10.

The landscape design arm of Arquitectonica, Arquitectonica Geo, is responsible for the Ballet Valet parking garage in Miami Beach. Photo by Dan Forer.

“The stable/garage was built with two intersecting gable roof forms," Schaer says, which didn't match up with the inteiror spaces within. “In order to provide a unified, singular main space, we dropped a flat ceiling at the entrance and linked it up with the main gable visible from the street.”

The master suite was fashioned from the house’s original garage in a 1970s renovation.

Ample windows cut into the north elevation of the Valentine House, behind which live the architects. The openings reveal lofty double-height spaces inside. The ground-floor garage often serves as a shop for architectural model-making. Photos by: Roger Davies

What Carstensen saved on labor costs he was able to put into furnishings. The interior of the screened-in porch is outfitted with a mix of furnishings, both vintage and new. He purchased the vintage Malm fireplace in Los Angeles on a work trip and had it shipped to Portland. The rug, shelf unit, and loveseat are all from the locally-based Schoolhouse Electric, as are the ceiling lights: Factory Light No. 7 in Green.

Carstensen painted the body and exterior trim on the garage the same color, in order to "make the house look slightly more modern, without losing character," he said. The color is a discontinued shade, called Evening Canyon, from Behr, that he had mixed at Home Depot. "I tried so many before landing on this one," he said. "This one ended up being my favorite, because it maintains a nice warm tone all throughout the day. Others would end up either looking too cool (almost navy blue) in direct sunlight, or just look brown."

Estacionamiento Televisa - Eskema Arquitectos

Estacionamiento Televisa - Eskema Arquitectos

The apartment above the garage received a dormer to enlarge the interior footprint.

At street level, the wooden garage door opens its toothed maw.

At Sea Ranch, a half-century-old enclave of rugged modernist houses on the Northern California coast, a new home captures the spirit of its surroundings. The client, a couple, were guided by the Sea Ranch rules—local covenants guide new designs—didn’t mean slipping into Sea Ranch clichés. Lovers of Cor-Ten steel, with its ruddy and almost organic surface, the architects made it the main exterior material, along with board-formed concrete and ipe wood. The Cor-Ten, which quickly turned an autumnal rust in the sea air, and the concrete, with its grain and crannies, mean the house isn’t a pristine box, Ramirez says. His Neutra house "was very crisp and clean," he says. "This house is more distressed, more wabi-sabi." Together, the Cor-Ten steel and board-form concrete give the exterior a weathered look.

The new dividing wall was sheathed in sanded pine plywood and includes a door for easy access to the other side of the garage.

Inside the closets are items like the family’s ski equipment, neatly arranged and always at the ready.

Color Me Rad To give the exterior of your home a chic, contemporary veneer without splurging on expensive cladding, use a bold accent color.