How Does Ceiling Fan Direction Impact Home Comfort?

Your ceiling fan direction may seem insignificant, but with Middletown’s seasonal temperature extremes, it can make a perceptible difference in your comfort year-round. That improvement in comfort helps you control your energy bills, so it pays to know how to get the most from your ceiling fan.

Keep Cool in Summer

On your fan’s motor housing, you’ll find a switch that controls the direction the fan blades spin. In summer, the blades should be set to spin counterclockwise as viewed from below. This direction pushes air downward, creating a breeze. As the air blows over your skin, it increases your skin’s rate of evaporation, creating a wind chill cooling effect. With your fan going, you’ll feel between 5 to 8 degrees cooler.

Because you feel cooler, you can raise your air conditioner’s thermostat temperature. For every degree you raise the temperature, you stand to save around 3 percent on your electricity bill. A ceiling fan uses around as much energy as a 100 watt bulb, which is less than your A/C uses, so you’ll cut your overall energy use without compromising your comfort.

A fan makes your body feel cooler, but it doesn’t lower the air temperature. When you leave the room for more than a minute or so, turn off the fan to save energy.

Enjoy More Winter Warmth

In winter, the right ceiling fan direction helps prevent your warm air from pooling at the ceiling and pushes warm air down to where you are. When it’s time to turn your furnace on, flip the fan blade switch to set the blades turning clockwise. Spinning this way on the lowest speed setting, the blades create an updraft. This draws up cooler air, which then pushes the warm air out to the sides of the room and downward. With better circulation of your warm air, you can lower your furnace thermostat to reduce your energy use.

For more information on ceiling fan direction and saving energy, check out C. R. Wolfe Heating & Air Conditioning’s home cooling and heating solutions.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Middletown, New York about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about ceiling fans and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Resource guide.

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