If you have a garage – and you actually have room to park a car in it – you probably don’t use your front door all that often.

It’s just easier to use the side or back door, especially if your garage is attached to your house.

Doesn’t it make sense, then, to make your garage as clean, bright, airy and open as possible?

That seems to be the thinking at this year’s Street of Dreams in rural Snohomish, open daily through Sunday.

Here you’ll find not only seriously high-end garage doors, but also fancy flooring, large windows trimmed with millwork and elaborate cabinet and storage systems.

At the Greenleaf Retreat home in the Street of Dreams, translucent panels on three extra-tall garage doors criss-crossed with metal edging, bring abundant light into the high-ceiling space. There’s also a south wall of vertical windows so high they seem to work like skylights.

At The Urban Lodge and Copper Falls homes, wooden garage doors feature windows only at the top to bring in extra light. There are no windows in the Tamarack home’s garage doors. Instead, they feature hardware that makes them look like old-fashioned barn doors.

“These are not the garages of our grandparents,” said Lori Machiorlette, marketing director with Worth Home Products, which sells pendant-style shop lights for garages. “People are almost turning them into party rooms. People love their cars and their garages are reflecting that.”

Storage is an even bigger issue for homeowners, said Grey Lundberg with Grey Lundberg-CMI Homes, builder of The Urban Lodge at the Street of Dreams, which has four car bays and a cabinet area that could rival most kitchen cabinet systems in terms of size.

“They have a lot of toys, bikes, canoes, kayaks, skis,” he said. “They just want to put them in the garages. Roof racks, bike racks – a lot of that stuff takes up space. Having a well-organized garage to house all that stuff is popular.”

In a region beleaguered by skyrocketing home prices, it only makes sense, Machiorlette said.

“It’s square footage,” she said. “People don’t like to see it go to waste.”

Reporter Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037 or sjackson@heraldnet.com.