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If you spend a lot of time in your garage working on your car or doing other projects, you need the space to be as comfortable as possible. Unfortunately, however, during the hot summer months, maintaining cool temperatures in your garage can be challenging. Luckily, there are things you can do to your roller door to help keep your garage cool.

Check out these tips and ideas:

1. Make sure your garage door closes tightly.

If you want to keep hot air outside, you need a garage door that closes tightly. Look over your garage door whilst it is closed. Does the bottom of the door squarely line up with the floor of your garage, or are there gaps? Do the sides of the door fit firmly against your wall?

If you answered yes to both of these questions, your door is fine and you can start to consider other elements. However, if your door is not closing properly, you need to talk with a repair person. Your springs may not be evenly supporting the weight of the door, your tracks may be bent, or there may be other issues with the door's operating mechanisms or supporting hardware.

2. Assess and reinstall your weather stripping.

Even if your garage door shuts tightly and securely, hot air can still seep into your garage through tiny cracks and crevices around the door. Weather stripping helps with this issue. When your door is closed, look at the weather stripping -- this is a layer of rubber along the base of the door. If it is ripped or broken in any way, you should remove it. It is merely glued in place, and you can usually pry it off with a screwdriver or a putty knife.

You can find new weather stripping from most garage door sales and repair companies. To install it, you simply glue it in place along the bottom of your door and make sure that the flap covers the gap between the floor and the door.

3. Insulate your garage door.

In addition to keeping hot air outside, you should also consider adding insulation to your garage door. If you cool your garage with a portable air conditioner, insulation helps it stay cool. To illustrate how this works, imagine how the insulation of a cooler helps keep its contents cool.

You can buy insulating kits designed to work with different types of garage doors, or you can simply glue batting to the panels of your garage door.

4. Paint your garage door a light colour.

If it works with the colour scheme of your home, consider repainting your garage door so that it reflects rather than absorbs sunlight. Ideally, you want to paint your door in a light colour like white.

If you really want your garage door to reflect sunlight, consider painting it with a unique product like paint that features chips of glass. While this type of paint is not available commercially as of 2016, there are hopes that it will enter the market soon. Alternatively, take a cue from this invention, skip the paint, and just cover your garage door with shiny, mirror-like contact paper.

5. Add opening and closing windows to your garage door.

In addition to sealing your garage door and trying to repel sunlight, you may also want to add a bit of ventilation to your garage. To do that, consider adding opening and closing windows to your existing garage door.

On extremely hot days, you can keep the windows closed and enjoy the sunlight. However, in the evening or when there is a cool breeze, you can open the windows and let the cool air come in.

Want more tips on preparing your garage door for the summer months? Then contact a garage door professional, such as those at Best Doors. They can help you assess the condition of your door and make improvements and repairs as needed.