The 2 most used size of garage door roller is 2-inch and 3-inch diameter. 90 percent of residential garage doors will use 2-inch rollers. The only application for 3-inch rollers is for commercial garage doors and as far as residential usage they can be found on custom solid wood carriage style doors because of the amount of weight the rollers need to support on these custom wood doors. When a garage door is in the up position all the weight of the garage door is placed on the stem of the rollers. The commercial application for 3-inch rollers is for oversized warehouse garage doors that are mostly constructed of steel and need to bare a lot of weight also. The easiest way to figure out what size you may have on your door is to measure the width of the garage door track that the rollers move up and down in.

Rollers sizes

There are rollers that are smaller than 2-inch in diameter and they are very rare on residential garage doors but they are out there. In my 15 years experience I have only seen one. Rollers smaller than 2-inches are usually used for smaller sectional roll up doors mostly found on the back of freight or delivery trucks. These roll up doors on trucks are pretty much identical to the sectional roll up door on your home. If for some reason you have a Fiberglass garage door from the 60’s and 70’s than you might have smaller rollers on your door.

lightweight garage doors

Fiberglass garage doors are extremely lightweight and do not need a very big roller to support it. Any kind of roller that is bigger than 3-inches will be used on extreme door application like airplane hangar doors. I have never seen any that size so they are not that common. You won’t see any 3-inch rollers in any hardware store so replacing them yourself will be tough. You might find a garage door company that will sell you just the rollers but they don’t like to because they want the labor $ to install them. If you are planning on replacing rollers yourself than you will need to be very careful and maybe find a how to video online before you attempt to do it on your own. Most of the danger is replacing the rollers at the very bottom of the door because they are attached to the cable that is inter attached to the wound up torsion springs that lift the door. Do not ever attempt to loosen any screws on the bottom left and right side of the door. You can injure or kill yourself quickly when those torsion springs are under full load. This is something that should be left to a professional garage door technician.