A stuck garage door is really two different problems wearing the same face. A door that will not close is usually a sensor or a limit setting, cheap, and often a ten-minute fix you can do yourself. A door that will not open is usually a spring or a cable, and those two repairs belong to a technician. This guide runs the checks in the same order our techs run them, so you find the cause in minutes and know which side of that line you are on.
01The 60-second checks
Five quick observations rule out half the causes before you touch a tool:
- Try the wall button. If the wall button moves the door but the remote does not, the door and opener are fine. You have a dead remote battery or a lost pairing, both covered in our opener programming guide.
- Check the lock feature. Most wall consoles have a Lock button that disables every remote when held for a few seconds, and elbows and kids turn it on constantly. A blinking LED on the console is the usual tell. Hold the button again to release it.
- Check the power. Ceiling outlets often share a GFCI circuit with the garage receptacles. Press Reset on any GFCI outlet in the garage, then check the breaker panel.
- Look at the trolley. If the opener runs its full cycle but the door never moves, the red manual release cord has been pulled and the door is disconnected from the opener. Re-engaging it takes ten seconds.
- Glance at the spring. Look at the fat coil spring on the bar above the door. A clean gap in the coils means it has snapped, and you can stop diagnosing.
02Door will not close
Nine times out of ten this is the safety sensors. The two small units mounted near the floor on either side of the opening project an invisible infrared beam across the doorway. If anything interrupts or misaligns that beam, the opener refuses to close, and by design. It would rather strand your door open than close it on something.
The giveaway pattern: the door starts down, stops, reverses back up, and the opener light flashes. The blockage is sometimes obvious, a trash can, a rake handle, a car bumper barely into the doorway. Just as often it is a cobweb across a lens, condensation, low sun shining straight into one sensor, or a bracket that took a knock from a bike tire and now points at the floor.
The fix order: clear the doorway, wipe both lenses, then bend or re-aim the brackets until the two units face each other dead-on and both indicator LEDs hold steady. The full walkthrough with bracket adjustment is in our sensor alignment guide, and if the sensors are damaged or the wiring is suspect, sensor repair is a quick service call.
The confirmation test: press and hold the wall button until the door reaches the floor. Holding the button overrides the sensors. If the door closes that way but not on a single press, the sensors are your cause, confirmed.
If the sensors check out, the close-travel limit may have drifted so the opener believes the door has reached the floor before it has, or something is physically sitting in the track. Both show up in the next two sections.
03Decode the blinking lights
The opener tells you what is wrong if you know its one-word vocabulary:
- Opener light flashes 10 times after a close attempt: safety sensor fault. That is the standard LiftMaster and Chamberlain signal, and most brands use something similar.
- Sensor LEDs: on LiftMaster and Chamberlain, the sending unit shows a steady amber light and the receiving unit a steady green one. Green off or flickering means the beam is not landing, so re-aim. Both dark means a power or wiring problem at the opener end.
- Genie: a steady red and a steady green mean aligned. Blinking red means the units do not see each other.
An opener that clicks and flashes but never runs at all is a different animal, usually a logic board or capacitor on the way out. That diagnostic path is in our opener troubleshooting guide, and opener repair is a same-day call.
04Closes, then reverses back up
Where the door reverses tells you why:
- Right at the floor: the close-travel limit is set a hair too deep. The opener presses the door into the slab, reads the resistance as an obstruction, and retreats. A newly coated garage floor or a thicker replacement bottom seal causes the same false alarm. The limit adjustment is two screws or two buttons on the motor unit, and your owner's manual has the exact procedure for your model.
- Same mid-travel spot every time: something is binding there. Usually a bent track section, a seized or shattered roller, or a hinge starting to fail. Cycling the opener through it makes each pass worse. This one is worth a professional eye, either roller replacement or track repair depending on what gave first.
- Immediately, with the light flashing: that is the sensors again, not the limits. Back to section two.
05Door will not open
Now the suspects get heavier, literally:
- The opener hums, or lifts the door a few inches and gives up. Prime symptom of a broken spring or a snapped cable. The opener is not a crane, it only assists a door the springs are already balancing, and with a dead spring the door effectively weighs everything it weighs. Stop pressing the button and check the next section.
- The opener runs a full cycle, the trolley slides, the door ignores it. The manual release was pulled. Re-engage per section eight.
- The door lifts easily by hand but the opener does nothing. The door side is healthy. Work the opener checklist: power, lock mode, then the troubleshooting guide.
- The door is very heavy by hand. Spring. Do not force it up, and do not prop it open with anything you value.
06How to spot a broken spring
Torsion springs live on the steel bar directly above the door and do the actual lifting. They are wound to a set number of cycles, and when they go, they go all at once. The signs, in the order people notice them:
- A loud bang from the garage, often with nobody near the door. That is the spring unwinding its stored energy in a fraction of a second. Most homeowners think something fell off a shelf.
- A visible gap in the spring. A healthy spring is one continuous coil. A broken one shows a clean two-inch separation.
- Slack or dangling cables. The lift cables lose tension when the spring stops holding the drums, and sometimes unwrap entirely.
- The top panel flexes when the opener strains against the dead weight.
- The door will not stay half-open, or slams the last few feet when lowered by hand.
Spring work is the one garage door repair with a genuine injury record behind it. The spring is under load even when broken, the winding bars have to be the right tool and the right technique, and the door has to be secured while the bar is unloaded. Our techs carry the common sizes for same-day spring replacement, and if you are not sure whether yours is broken or just tired, spring repair starts with a free look at the whole counterbalance system.
07Door opens by itself
Less common, more unsettling, and almost never a mystery once found:
- A shorting wall button or pinched wire. The low-voltage wire from console to opener was stapled during construction, and a staple that nicked the insulation can take twenty years to start closing the circuit on its own. This is the top cause.
- A neighbor's remote. Real, but only on pre-1993 DIP-switch openers, where two houses can genuinely share a code. Modern rolling-code openers make this effectively impossible.
- A smart opener doing what it was told. A myQ close-at-night schedule, or a family member's phone, opens and closes doors that owners swear are haunted.
If the door closes fully and then comes back up, that is the reversal problem in section four, not a phantom signal. And if the wiring is the suspect, that is a quick opener service visit rather than a DIY hunt through the walls.
08The manual release, done safely
The red cord hanging from the opener rail disconnects the door from the opener so you can move it by hand during a power cut or a failed opener. The safe sequence:
- Close the door first if it will close. The release is safest with the door down.
- Unplug the opener so it cannot start while the trolley is free.
- Pull the red cord down and slightly toward the door. The trolley clicks apart.
- Lift the door by hand. A healthy door lifts with modest effort and stays put half-open. A door that fights you or slams has a spring problem.
- To reconnect, pull the cord back toward the opener, plug it in, and run one cycle. The trolley picks the door back up with a click.
The one rule: never pull the release while the door is up if the spring might be broken. At that moment the opener is the only thing holding the door, and releasing it drops the full weight at once.
09Symptom-to-cause table
The whole guide in one look:
| Symptom | Most likely cause | Whose job |
|---|---|---|
| Reverses and the light flashes | Blocked or misaligned sensors | DIY, ten minutes |
| Closes only while holding the wall button | Sensors, confirmed | DIY |
| Reverses right at the floor | Close limit set too deep | DIY with the manual |
| Reverses at the same mid-travel spot | Bent track or seized roller | Metro |
| Opener hums, door stays down | Broken spring or cable | Metro, same day |
| Loud bang, door suddenly heavy | Broken torsion spring | Metro, same day |
| Opener runs, door never moves | Manual release pulled | DIY, ten seconds |
| Wall button works, remote does not | Remote battery or pairing | DIY |
| Nothing responds at all | GFCI, breaker, or logic board | DIY, then Metro |
| Opens or closes on its own | Shorting button wire or smart schedule | Metro if wiring |
10When to call instead
The dividing line is tension. Anything that only involves the opener's brain, sensors, limits, remotes, wiring at the console, is fair DIY territory. Anything attached to the counterbalance system, springs, cables, drums, bottom brackets, and anything involving a door that is off its tracks or visibly crooked, is carrying load and belongs to a technician.
Metro has been repairing Atlanta's garage doors since 1979 from two locations, Douglasville and Alpharetta, with same-day repair as the default rather than the upsell. Every tech is a Metro employee, every truck carries the common springs, cables, rollers and sensors, and every job is quoted in writing before work starts. If the door still is not moving by the end of this page, repair service is one call away.
FAQ
Why won't my garage door close?
Blocked or misaligned safety sensors cause most of these calls. The two small units near the floor on either side of the opening project an invisible beam, and if anything breaks it, a trash can, a cobweb, low sun glare, or a bracket knocked out of line, the opener refuses to close and flashes its light. Clean both lenses, aim the brackets at each other, and check that both indicator LEDs are lit steady. If the door closes while you press and hold the wall button, the sensors are confirmed as the cause. After sensors, the usual suspects are a close-travel limit that has drifted and a physical obstruction in the track.
Why won't my garage door open?
If the opener hums or the door lifts a few inches and stops, the most likely cause is a broken torsion spring, and the door is now far heavier than the opener can lift. Look at the spring above the door for a visible gap of about two inches. Other causes are a tripped GFCI outlet or breaker, the lock feature enabled on the wall console, and a manual release cord that was pulled, which disconnects the door from the opener entirely. If the door also feels very heavy when you lift it by hand, stop and call a technician. The spring system is under load and is not a safe repair to attempt.
Why does my garage door go down then come back up?
If it reverses right at the floor, the close-travel limit is set a touch too deep, so the opener presses into the slab, reads the resistance as an obstruction, and retreats. A new garage floor coating or a thicker replacement bottom seal triggers the same thing. If it reverses at the same spot in mid-travel every time, something is binding there, usually a bent track section or a seized roller. If it reverses immediately and the opener light flashes, that is the safety sensors, not the limits.
Why does my garage door open by itself?
A wall button or its wiring shorting intermittently is the most common cause, often from a staple pinched through the low-voltage wire years ago. On openers made before 1993 with DIP-switch coding, a neighbor's remote on the same switch pattern can genuinely operate your door. Smart openers add a third possibility, a myQ schedule or a family member's phone. If the door closes fully and then reopens, that is the reversal problem above, not a phantom signal.
Is it safe to pull the red manual release cord?
Yes, when the door is fully closed. Unplug the opener, pull the red cord down and toward the door, and the door is free to lift by hand. Do not pull the release while the door is open if there is any chance the spring is broken, because the opener is the only thing holding the door up at that point and it can fall with real force. To reconnect, pull the cord back toward the opener and run it once so the trolley clicks into place.
How much does it cost to fix a garage door that won't open?
It depends entirely on the cause, which is why we diagnose before we quote. A sensor realignment, a spring replacement, and a track repair are all different jobs at different prices. Every Metro repair starts with a written quote before any work begins, and the number on the estimate is the number on the invoice. Same-day appointments are standard across metro Atlanta at (770) 526-1214.
