The One Place You Don't Want To Install A Ceiling Fan

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With temperatures rising due to climate change every year, it's not uncommon for homeowners to look for cost-reducing and energy-efficient ways to keep their homes cool in record-breaking summer temperatures. Instead of cranking up the air conditioning and raising electricity and gas bills as a result, installing ceiling fans has been a go-to solution. A tried and true way to keep your home cool in the summer, ceiling fans can also be used to keep your home warm in the winter by having the blades rotate in a clockwise direction. Since they offer the most energy and cost-efficient ways to both warm and cool homes, it's unsurprising to find a wide selection of ceiling fans for each room in your home in stores. While ideal for bedrooms and kitchens, there's one place where ceiling fans don't belong, and that's in the living room.  

According to some interior designers, homeowners should avoid installing ceiling fans in living rooms. In smaller living rooms or those with low ceilings in particular, installing a ceiling fan can make the space feel even tinier and more cramped. While the appliance does occupy ceiling real estate instead of the more essential floor space, depending on the design and number of blades, it can look clunky and imposing, ruining the aesthetic of your gathering space. Pre-installed ceiling fans can also look outdated and often require upgrading both for function and style.

So how can you encourage air flow without adding a ceiling fan to a room? There are a few other ways to cool and circulate air. Investing in other types of fans, such as box, tabletop, and floor fans, like this Amazon Basics 16-inch pedestal fan, are a great alternative as long as you know where to place them. Proper placement and positioning of these types of fans in your living room can work just as well as a ceiling fan would at circulating the air. Tabletop fans work well to ventilate smaller rooms and spaces, while floor fans are ideal for creating additional air movement in larger rooms. Box fans, on the other hand, can be placed in windows to pull cool air in or push hot air out, depending on which way you have the fan facing. 

While box, tabletop, and floor fans are great for creating breezes within rooms, they can fall short at pushing stale air out and bringing fresh air in on their own. This is when opening windows and doors in or surrounding your living room can come into play. If you have multiple windows in your living room, especially some that face each other, this can help create a cross breeze that can effectively cool off your space in the evening when the temperature outside has dropped, while also bringing fresh air in. If there is only one window in your living room, positioning a floor or box fan in front of it can also help create a cross breeze to lower the room temperature and usher fresh air inside.