Driveway Gate Sizing: How Wide to Go and How to Measure It

The wrong width is the mistake you live with every day. Too narrow and you fold a mirror every time you come home; too wide and you paid for steel you never drive through. Getting it right takes a vehicle table, a tape measure and fifteen minutes.

Width by vehicle

The driveway gate width guide sizes the clear opening, the distance between the posts, against your vehicle's width with mirrors. The margin you need depends on how straight your approach is.

The turning column is the one people underestimate. If your driveway meets the street at an angle, the rear wheels track inside the front wheels and a trailer cuts the corner further. A 12-foot gate on a driveway that meets the street at 45 degrees behaves like a 9-foot gate. Size for the truck or trailer you will own in five years, not just the car you have now.

Height and the top bar

Five to six feet is the usual gate height, and local rules often cap front-yard gates lower, so check before you order. For tall vehicles, watch anything that spans the opening: a box truck is 12 to 13 feet tall and a Class A motorhome up to 13 feet 6 inches. Our arch and finial styles shape the top of each panel and do not span the opening, so there is no overhead bar to hit.

One panel or two

Up to about 12 feet, a single swing panel is simple and cheap. From 12 to 20 feet, most gates are two panels meeting in the middle, which keeps each panel lighter and halves the swing arc. Sliding gates are always one panel and scale to 40 feet on a track or 60 feet as a cantilever. Our gates come in widths from 3 feet to 21 feet 4 inches: slide gates up to 20 feet, and single side-opening swing gates up to 15 feet, or 13 feet with ironwood infill.

How to measure

The guide on how to measure for a driveway gate is fifteen minutes with a tape, a helper, a phone and a pen. The most important number is post to post: inside face to inside face, where the gate will hang.

1. Post to post at hinge height, about 3 feet up, to the nearest quarter inch.
2. Again near the top and bottom. Posts lean. If the three numbers agree within half an inch, use the smallest. If not, note all three and look at the posts.
3. Height. Measure the existing posts or decide the height you want. The top of the gate is the gate height plus the ground clearance.
4. The ground. Note the highest and lowest points across the opening. The bottom rail should clear the high point by 2 to 4 inches.
5. Swing room or slide run. Walk each panel's arc, or measure the straight fence line beside the opening for a slider.
6. Four photos, with the tape visible: from the street, from the house, and each post where it meets the ground.

No posts yet? Decide the opening you want and measure between the marks where the posts will stand. The gate's instructions give the exact post spacing to set. If clearing the high point of the ground leaves a gap of eight inches at the low side, you have a slope problem, not a measuring problem, and a slider or cantilever is usually the answer.

Why sized to the inch matters

Most suppliers sell stock widths of 10, 12, 14 and 16 feet. If your opening is 13 feet 4 inches, you either cut the opening bigger, add a filler, or pay a custom premium. We build every gate to the inch at the same price: a 160-inch gate costs what a 160-inch gate costs, and it hangs on your posts without shims or fillers. Put your post-to-post number in the configurator and you can compare 12, 14 and 16 feet in a few seconds to see what the extra margin costs.