While in general, fan blades should spin clockwise for cooling, I've seen a few fans that have the blades installed in the opposite direction. There are two ways to check which direction the fan should rotate:

- Look at the blades. They are angled and push the air as the leading edge moves, and so if the leading edge is the high side, it will push the air down (and vice versa).

- Or just turn the fan on high and stand right under it. Turn it off, flip the switch, and turn it back on. You should be able to easily tell the difference.

My initial reaction to this story was "Really? people don't know this?", but then I thought about the fact that I just figured out how to roll up those ugly canvas pull-down drapes last night. I guess the trick was to pull down slightly, and let go. No one ever told me this.

@chrylis: Just checked mine, and it goes counterclockwise to push air down.

Just checked my fans... Hunters... Both of them spin counterclock to blow down as well.

Oh no. This is exactly like skid advice. You turn into the skid if you have front wheel drive or out if you have rear wheel, or......

What I'm saying is clockwise or counter direction/blade angle aside, do we want the air blowing down in the summer and up in the winter?

kinda surprised this wasnt just common sense. I've always run my fans this way. Hot air rises. Third grade here people.

I checked both of my fans, and they spin counterclockwise to blow air down.

My guess is that when it's hot, the warm air rises, and spinning them counterclockwise would blow that hot air down at you, something you don't want on a hot summer day.

Is this correct?

If I set my fan to blow down, it blows my papers all over the place and keeps blowing my hair into my face. So having it blow upwards all year round is doing it right, for me.

@castlecraver: Look down on the fan from above it. You'll see that it actually does run clockwise......

sorry, had to say it.

This story sounds like a lot of hot air!

What's all this gibberish about counterclockwise and clockwise? Not all fans have their blades angled the same way.

Moreover, not all rooms are built the same and people have different types of A/C (or none at all). That being said, I'd suggest choosing whatever setting makes you feel most comfortable.

In general, if you're sweating/hot, you want the air blowing towards you (think about perspiration in humans or transpiration in plants).

@Doug Nelson: Then aren't you blowing hot air on yourself in the summertime? Wouldn't you be better off not using the fan in the summertime?

I've heard this for years and years. Blow the air down, you get the wind chill effect, and you feel cooler. Blow the air up so that the cold air mixes with the hot air, and you reduce your heating use. But, uh, it's a (mostly) closed system. If you suck the hot air down, it still mixes with the cold air. Oh, you don't want to feel the wind chill in winter? There are also speed controls on fans. You don't have to feel the fan to get the air circulation effect. In effect, you don't have to worry about blade installation direction, rotation direction, and all that. Just run your fan, and use your rheostat or scr-controlled speed control (or X10, or even cheap fans have remote controls these days).

Does air being blown upward during the winter actually help?
I have extraordinarily low power bills and have never done it. Seems like the slight increase in wind chill simply from moving air along with the cost of running the electric motor in the fan would offset any benefit during the winter.

Unless you have really tall ceilings, there is little temperature differential from top to bottom. I would agree that running the fan to blow air down on you in the summer helps you feel cooler. In the winter, I suspect it does nothing.

@kisskisskiss: @Sham03: The blowing of the air changes the pressure, which makes it feel cooler, much like standing the in the doorway of a large building, the air fells cooler rushing in during the hot hot summer.

I've intentionally left our bedroom ceiling fan blowing "up" even for the summer, because that gets us a breeze on our faces. Blowing down in the center of the room is less important to us.

So, YMMV.

"If the blades are spinning counterclockwise, then you're doing it wrong, and the fan is circulating warmer air. "

Don't think so. Counterclockwise to cool on my fans, too.

Why is this so suprising for people. You see these dual action fan a lot in houses with high ceiling. The reverse makes your house heater very efficient during winter. Since the air comes down on the side by the walls, you don't get wind chill effect unless you standing right up against the wall.

My fan also spins counterclockwise to blow air downwards. You're doing it wrong.

I have a hard time believe this. If you have a fan blowing air down, it'll be the warm ceiling air. If you have a fan blowing up, it'll still be moving air and there will still be the "wind chill" effect as mentioned (what actually happens is the high velocity air speeds up evaporation from your skin, which feels cool).

Anyway, it would seem to me what you would want is high speed in the summer for a cooling breeze and low speed in the winter for a gentle mixing action.

oh, and I meant to mention that the wind chill effect as mentioned is not the same as as what happens in nature, which is more complicated that simply moving air faster. Anyone who has felt a hot wind like california's Santa Ana conditions should realize this. But real wind chill comes from air that is colder and drier than ambient and is far stronger than any fan can deliver.

I'm not surprised that there are people who don't know this: there are so many little facts like this that people just pick up as they grow up. It's not hard to miss one or two of those facts. It took me a little while to realize there was a reverse switch on ceiling fans.

Another thing I've noticed about my ceiling fans: the blades are attached by screws to the main base, and those screws can become loose. I don't know if there's a risk of blades flying off, or if loose screws mean lower efficiency, or if it doesn't matter at all, but I like to go around with my electric screwdriver, tighten the screws on the fan, and feel like I've accomplished something, as sad as that may sound. :)

picture should say VENTILATION. UR DOIN IT WRONG

My wife calls me the ceiling fan whisperer. When I walk into a room, ceiling fans are the first thing I notice. I cannot stand a fan moving the wrong way. Of course here in Louisiana, they should almost always be set in "cool" mode. I find myself changing the direction when nobody is around.

I did save my friend a bunch of $ because all of his were going the wrong way and even with their fans on high, it never cooled off. Of course the amount of dust that came off when the direction was changed was amazing. Looked like dust snakes.

Wrong, my fans spin counterclockwise as well to produce that wind tunnel effect.

if you need an article to point this out to you, then you deserve to be roasting in your own house

My blades are angled upwards at an angle, so I have to go counter-clockwise to get air.

For S&G, I flipped the switch to go clockwise. Almost no air.

I guess it depends on how folks have the blades mounted.

I live in Dallas, where it is HOT already. We have two ceiling fans and AC. So my question is, is it better to keep the house slightly warmer and run the two ceiling fans, or should I just lower the AC by a few degrees and keep the fans off? Which is more energy efficient?

Feeling nothing. I think my blades need more tilt.

Since my cieling fan is in the middle of the room & my chair is next to the wall..... I set my fan to whereit brings air up & blows it outwards along the cieling & then down the walls. Otherwise I wouldnt get a breeze at all unless I stood directly nder the fan.

@balthisar:
Agreed. Generally a room would be a mostly closed system, and the fan is just acting as a big mixer to combine/circulate the different temp air. Just set it to what works.

@Islandkiwi: I live in the DFW area as well. Run the fans. I run mine year round, and I can tell on my electric bill when I've got the ac running - it looks like a Bell curve centered on July. I've found that running the fans allows me to bump the thermostat up a couple of degrees and still be comfortable.

You can also go watch your meter spin. Watch how fast it spins with the fans on, then turn them off and crank up the ac and watch it spin.

The only reason I can see to reverse the blades in winter (and set speed to low) is to reduce the wind chill by not blowing directly on you. Either direction will mix the air.

To the "not that complicated" crowd: in that case, why do so many people even on a site like this have a hard time believing/understanding this? Air blowing on you will make you feel cooler (yes, even if is the warm air that collected at the ceiling), allowing you to be comfortable with a higher thermostat setting, so set your fan to blow it on wherever you happen to be -- for most people, that's the middle of the room.

And yes, running the fan in reverse to mix the hot air that's collecting at the ceiling (or worse, escaping through your attic) will reduce your heating bill in winter, especially if you have a high cathedral ceiling. You don't to merely "mix" the air: to be most effective you want to push air up to the highest part of the ceiling where it will force hot air down the sides of the room, which is why you normally run it in reverse, assuming you have one fan in the middle of the room.

When I worked in HVAC we lived by the mantra "fans cool people, not rooms".

@simplegreen: They never discussed the fact that ceiling fans can pull air up and push it down in any of my science classes. This is only common sense if you grew up in a house with ceiling fans in it.

@privatejoker75: There were several comments before yours that berated people for not already knowing this information, but I didn't see anyone say the uninformed -deserved- to be hot and uncomfortable until yours. Bravo! I thought/hoped one article was actually going to go by without anyone directly blaming the "victim," but your comment basically boils (pun intended) down to "you deserve to be hot because you didn't know better."

Not everyone grew up with ceiling fans, not everyone knows they can be reversed. I marvel at how many people who READ Consumerist don't want them to provide helpful and economical hints to their readers... what do people who already know everything there is to know about everything even COME here for, anyway?

Counterclockwise pushes air down here as well. Is there no standard on ceiling fan blade angles? \ or /

Thats what makes the difference, which way the blades are angled.

The fan in the picture looks the same way... looking straight on the end of the blade, the right side is lower than the left. So it would have to move CCW to push air down.

@lihtox:
Loose blades certainly do go flying off!
Someone hired me to replace their fan when she was scared shitless in the middle of the night as one of the blades flew off while she was sleeping.
She didn't want the old fan fixed, bought a new one.
The blade left quite a nice dent in the plaster on the wall.

To take it a step further...

I use a 4 pole relay to select between two thermostats. During the day, I select the thermostat in the living room & block off all the vents in the bedroom.

At night, flip toggle switch and run a/c from thermostat in bedroom, and close vents in living room.

@dangermike: When you're blowing the air up against the ceiling, the fan isn't strong enough to create a wind chill effect in the room.

@Slack

That's a good idea.

"The idea is that the fan mixes the warm air collecting at the ceiling and moves it back down into the perimeter of room, creating a higher average room temperature"

Fans can't change the "average room temperature" they can only change the amount of deviation from the average room temperature. Say the air in the lower half of the room is 60 and in the upper half it's 80. Turning on the fan will mix the air, and hopefully make the all of the room 70 degrees. Throughout the whole time, the average (the mean) is 70 degrees.

This was a very valuable tip for me. I forgot all about reversing the direction! If only the post included the tip" "Clean your blades first," as mine rained tiny bits of lint everywhere when I spun them back up in the opposite direction.

(I know, tsk tsk, bad housekeeper)

Sharpen the blades.

Whirling blades vs. enemies FTW.

chrylis at 10:17 AM on 06/08/08
has the clearest explanation: the side [of the blade] that is tilted up is the same direction you want the spin in order to have a downward airflow.

I've checked several sites and have read both clock and counter-clock directions as correct.

Most also instruct on to stand directly below the fan to determine the direction of spin.

For some reason it can be disorienting and an optical illusion with the same unit seemingly to be clockwise in one instance and reversed in another.

I will go with the upward tilt of the blade method.

I've known about the switch for years so when I read this I thought to myself, "Haha, silly people don't even know how to use their fans correctly..."

Then I looked up and noticed mine was spinning the wrong way.

"Well shit."

It doesn't take having a terribly tall ceiling to make ceiling fans impractical in the summertime. I have 12' ceilings here and the AC supply vents are at the 8' level. This was done to avoid having to cool the upper 4' of the rooms. When I get up there to change light bulbs, there's a definite difference in temperature.

Also, turn off ceiling fans when you're not in the room -- they only waste electricity when there's no one under them.

@Slack: If your AC wasn't designed to handle this (and it definitely sounds like it wasn't, otherwise it'd have proper dampers & zone controls), you're putting extra strain on your AC's compressor. You may be saving some electricity now, but one premature compressor replacement will nix any savings you had by doing it this way.