Richmond has a lot of small commercial. Auto shops along No. 5 Road. Warehouses in Bridgeport. Boat-storage and marine-services buildings along Steveston Highway. Strata parkade entrances all over Brighouse and West Cambie. Aircraft hangars on Sea Island.

Each one has the same buying decision: roll-up door, or sectional door?

I did three years on industrial doors in Berlin, Wellington, and Lisbon before I moved back to Steveston in 2024. Every shop runs into this question. Here's the framework I use to answer it.

The two designs

Sectional doors are what most people picture when they hear "garage door" — horizontal panels hinged together, riding on tracks that curve from vertical (when closed) to horizontal (when open, parked overhead under the ceiling). Same basic concept as a residential door, just bigger.

Roll-up doors (also called rolling steel doors or coiling doors) are a continuous curtain of interlocked steel slats that wind around a barrel-shaped drum mounted above the opening. The whole door rolls up into a tight coil overhead — no track running back into the ceiling.

Both serve the same function. The differences matter at the margins.

Where roll-up wins

Limited headroom. A sectional door needs 30–45 cm of clearance above the opening for the horizontal track to mount, plus 90–150 cm of horizontal track running back into the ceiling space. A roll-up needs only 30–45 cm above the opening (for the barrel) and basically zero behind. In a low-ceiling space — converted warehouse, basement parkade, older industrial building — the roll-up fits where the sectional won't.

Security. A roll-up curtain is harder to defeat than a sectional door. There are no hinges to pry, no panels to push in. The slats interlock and resist forced entry better. For storage units, jewellery-store loading docks, gun-shop receiving doors — the roll-up is the default.

High cycle counts. Commercial roll-up doors are commonly rated for 50,000 to 100,000 cycles before major service. A high-cycle sectional usually tops out around 25,000–50,000 before requiring serious work. Heavy-use commercial — auto-shop bays cycling 40+ times per day, busy parkade entrances — favours roll-up.

Door width. Roll-ups handle very wide openings better than sectionals. A 10-metre-wide loading dock door is straightforward in roll-up. The same width in sectional gets into expensive multi-track territory.

Where sectional wins

Insulation. A sectional door with foam-injected panels reaches R-18 easily. A roll-up door's continuous steel curtain is harder to insulate effectively — best roll-up insulated curtains in 2026 reach about R-9 to R-12. If you're heating the space, sectional wins.

Aesthetic. Sectional doors come in wood-look, glass-and-aluminum, painted steel, raised-panel decorative — pretty much anything a designer wants. Roll-up doors look like roll-up doors. Industrial. For strata entrances, retail-facing storefronts, mixed-use buildings — sectional usually wins on appearance.

Noise. Roll-up doors are loud. The slats clatter as they roll, the barrel makes mechanical noise, the operator chains/belts add to it. Sectional doors with belt-drive openers are dramatically quieter. For a strata building with residential units above the parkade — sectional is mandatory unless you want noise complaints.

Wind load and impact resistance. A premium sectional with a wind-load reinforcement option (sometimes called "Florida-spec" because hurricane codes drove the engineering) takes high wind better than most roll-ups. Roll-up doors deflect under high pressure differential. For exposed locations — Sea Island airport apron, waterfront marine yards — sectional with wind-load reinforcement is the better engineering choice.

Repair access. Sectional doors are more modular. Damage a panel, replace the panel. Damage a roll-up slat curtain, you typically replace the whole curtain. In a real impact (car backs into door — happens more than you'd think), sectional repair costs less.

The cost question

Roll-up doors generally cost more upfront. The barrel, the housing, the heavier-duty operator, the more substantial frame — they all add up.

Size class Sectional installed Roll-up installed
10x10 commercial $4,500–$6,800 $6,800–$9,800
12x12 commercial $5,800–$8,500 $8,200–$12,500
16x14 light industrial $7,800–$12,500 $11,500–$16,800
20x18 heavy industrial $11,500–$18,500 $14,500–$22,800

These are 2026 Lower Mainland CAD prices, leaning toward the high end of typical quotes, parts and labour included, before insulation upgrades.

But the lifetime cost can flip the math. A high-cycle commercial roll-up rated for 100,000 cycles serving an auto shop doing 50 cycles/day will last 5+ years before major service. A sectional in the same use will need spring replacement at year 3 and major work at year 5. Cost averaged over 10 years can favour the roll-up.

What I install in what

Here's my decision tree for Richmond small commercial:

The operator question

Commercial operators are an order of magnitude more capable than residential. The standard residential opener pushes maybe 65–90 kg of door. Commercial operators handle 200–800 kg routinely.

Common commercial operators I install in Richmond:

These prices include installation, basic photo eyes, wall control station, three remotes, and basic surge protection. Specialty options (radio detection loops, programmable timers, integration with access-control systems) add $385–$1,485 depending on the spec.

The reset on what I see in Richmond

About 65% of the commercial doors I service in Richmond are sectional. The 35% that are roll-up are mostly in storage facilities, auto-body shops in older Bridgeport buildings, and a few marine-services yards in Steveston where the security feature matters.

The Brighouse and West Cambie newer-construction strata parkades are almost all sectional, both for the residential noise reasons and because the developers want them to look like architectural features. They're spec'd from the design stage as sectional with specific painting and panel-style requirements.

If you're building or replacing a commercial door in Richmond and you don't know which to pick, sectional is the safer default. Only switch to roll-up if you have a specific reason — limited headroom, very high cycle count, security priority, or width over 10 metres.

Cost reality check (2026, Lower Mainland CAD) — commercial install - Light commercial sectional 10x10 installed: $4,500–$6,800 - Mid-commercial sectional 12x12 installed: $5,800–$8,500 - Light commercial roll-up 10x10 installed: $6,800–$9,800 - Mid-commercial roll-up 12x12 installed: $8,200–$12,500 - Commercial sectional with wind-load reinforcement: add 15–25% - Commercial insulated upgrade (R-12 to R-18): add $1,485–$3,485 - Heavy-duty commercial operator: $2,485–$4,285 including basic accessories - High-cycle spring package for commercial sectional: $685–$1,485 per pair

A Sea Island story

A small charter-floatplane operator on Sea Island called me last fall. Their hangar had a 24x14 sectional door from the late 1990s. The door panels were corroded from constant salt-air exposure (Sea Island is surrounded by water and the runway winds carry salt aerosol all over the apron buildings). The springs were on their fifth replacement. The operator wanted to know: replace the door, or convert to roll-up?

I quoted both: - New sectional, insulated R-12, wind-load reinforced, with new commercial operator: $18,250 - New roll-up, insulated as best as roll-up can do (R-9), with heavier commercial operator and brake: $24,750

But the math wasn't just upfront cost. The roll-up would last longer in cycle terms but the salt air would eat the slat curtain edges as fast as it ate the sectional panels. And the sectional was easier for them to service in their corrosive environment because individual panels can be swapped without taking down the whole curtain.

I recommended the sectional. They went with the recommendation. Three months later the new door is working, the manager texted me a photo of a Beaver taking off framed by the new door opening. They saved $6,500 and got the door that fit their actual operational pattern.

Sometimes the wrong question is "roll-up or sectional." The right question is "what fails first in your specific environment, and how easy is the repair when it does."

That's the post.

Related reading