Abstract: In this paper, we define both the upper and lower order of a sense-preserving harmonic mapping in D. We generalize to the harmonic case some known results about holomorphic functions with positive lower order and we show some consequences of a function having finite upper order. In addition, we improve a related result in the case when there is equality in a known distortion theorem for harmonic mappings with finite upper order. Some examples are provided to illustrate the developed theory. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.