Outdoor
Half the braced gates we see are braced backwards
A gate brace has to run from the bottom hinge corner up to the top latch corner. Fitted the other way it does almost nothing, and the gate sags anyway.
A gate is a rectangle held up along one edge, and gravity spends every day trying to turn it into a parallelogram. That is the whole problem. The corner furthest from the hinges — the top of the latch side — wants to drop, and once it has, the latch no longer lines up with the strike and the bottom of the gate starts dragging.
The fix is a diagonal brace, and the direction is not a matter of preference.
The rule
For a wooden brace, it runs from the bottom of the hinge side up to the top of the latch side. Fitted that way the brace is in compression — the sagging corner pushes down along the brace, and the brace transfers that load to the bottom hinge, which is being pushed into solid post. Wood is very strong in compression, so this works well and lasts.
Fitted the other way — top of the hinge side down to the bottom of the latch side — the brace is in tension. Now it is trying to hold the corner up by pulling on it, and all that force ends up in the fasteners at each end. Wood is poor in tension across a joint, the fasteners work loose, and the gate sags exactly as if there were no brace at all.
The low end of the brace goes at the hinges. If you imagine the sagging corner pushing down, the brace should be in the way of that push, propping it — like a leg under a shelf. If instead it looks like a rope trying to hold the corner up, it is backwards.
The exception, which causes the confusion
Steel cable and turnbuckle kits work the other way round — high at the hinge side, low at the latch side — because cable only works in tension and cannot push at all. That is why you see both configurations in the wild and why people assume it is a preference. It is not. Rigid brace: compression, low end at the hinges. Cable: tension, high end at the hinges. Using a wooden brace in the cable orientation is the single most common gate mistake there is.
Before you brace anything, check the post
A perfectly braced gate hung on a post that has moved is still going to sag, because the post is what moved. The hinge post carries the entire weight of the gate on a lever arm, so it takes far more load than any other post in the fence and it fails first.
Push the hinge post firmly
Any movement at ground level means the post is loose in the ground and the gate is not your problem.
Test the wood at the soil line
Press a screwdriver into the post right where it meets the ground. If it goes in easily, the post has rotted — that is where rot always starts, because it alternates wet and dry.
Check whether the post is leaning
Sight down it or use a level. A hinge post pulled out of plumb by the gate's weight drops the latch corner regardless of how square the gate itself is.
Only then look at the gate frame
Square it, brace it correctly, and set the hardware to the squared position rather than the sagged one.
One more thing about setting posts
A post set in a concrete collar with no way for water to escape sits in a bath. Water collects in the bottom of the hole, the post stays permanently wet at exactly the point where the strength is needed, and it rots from the inside at grade. Gravel in the base of the hole for drainage, or concrete sloped away from the post at the top so water sheds rather than pools, makes a very large difference to how long a post lasts.
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