Ceiling Fan Direction for Winter: Which Way It Should Spin

For winter, your ceiling fan should spin clockwise as you look up at it, on its lowest speed. In that direction the blades pull room air up toward the ceiling, which pushes the warm air collected up there out along the ceiling and down the walls. You get that heat back at couch level without a cold breeze on your shoulders. Summer is the opposite: counterclockwise, for the breeze.

Small comfort adjustments like this add up, because heating is one of the biggest loads in the house. ENERGY STAR notes that as much as half of the energy used in a home goes to heating and cooling. A fan running the right way helps the heat you already paid for reach the people in the room.

The winter setting works because warm air rises and pools at the ceiling. Your furnace or heat pump sends warm air into the room, it drifts up, and a layer of the warmest air in the house sits above everyone's heads.

In a room with a standard 8-foot ceiling, that layer is thin and the payoff from the fan is small. In a vaulted living room, a two-story entry or a loft, the difference between the air up high and the air at the sofa can be large enough to feel. That is where the clockwise setting earns its keep.

Running clockwise on low moves air gently upward in the middle of the room. The air that was trapped at the peak gets pushed outward and slides down the walls. No direct draft hits anyone, which is the point. Air moving across your skin feels cooler, and in January that is the last thing you want.

The setting matters a little more in homes heated by a heat pump, which many Sacramento-area houses now are. Its supply air is warm rather than hot, so a tall room depends on even mixing to feel comfortable at the thermostat setting.

Stand directly under the fan with it on low, look up and follow one blade around. Clock-hand direction is clockwise, the winter setting.

If the blades are too fast to follow, use your skin instead. A steady breeze pressing down on you means the fan is running counterclockwise, the summer setting. Little or no breeze directly below means clockwise. It is easy to leave fans in summer mode all year simply because nobody thinks to check them in October.

Most fans change direction with a small switch on the motor housing, and many newer fans do it from a remote, wall control or app.

1. Turn the fan off and wait for the blades to stop completely.
2. Look on the side of the motor housing, just above the blades, for a small slide switch. Flip it to the other position.
3. Turn the fan back on at its lowest speed and check the direction again.

If there is no switch on the housing, the fan is probably a DC-motor model. Those change direction with a reverse button on the handheld remote or the wall control, or through the manufacturer's app if it has one. The model's manual shows exactly where the reverse control is.

If a fan sits too high in a vaulted ceiling to reach, check whether its remote or wall control has a reverse button before giving up on it.

Run the winter setting on the lowest speed. At higher speeds the air coming back down the walls moves fast enough to feel like a draft, and the room feels cooler instead of warmer.

Our recommendation: reverse the fans in vaulted rooms, lofts and two-story spaces, and simply turn off fans in standard-height bedrooms. In an 8-foot bedroom there is not enough stratified heat to justify running a fan all night. In a Folsom great room with a 16-foot ceiling, there is.

Fans move air. They do not make heat. A fan left spinning in an empty room only uses electricity, so turn it off when everyone leaves. If you are shopping for a new fan for a tall room, the ENERGY STAR ceiling fan listings are the place to start, since certified models use less energy to move the same air.

Here is the pattern in a lot of newer two-stories: a 2000s house with a vaulted family room open to the upstairs hallway. The thermostat is in the family room, the heat runs a long time on cold mornings, and the couch still feels chilly while the upstairs landing is warm. The ceiling fan has been running counterclockwise since July. Flipping it to clockwise on low pushes that landing heat back down, and the couch end of the room usually feels warmer within a day.

Call us if the fan setting helps but a tall room still runs several degrees colder than the rest of the house, if the heat runs long on mild mornings, or if the warm air upstairs never seems to reach the main floor. Those are usually airflow, return or duct questions, and we can measure them.

PULSE HVAC services heating systems and airflow problems across the Sacramento area. Call (916) 850-2221 or book online to schedule a visit.

Sources

• ENERGY STAR — Heating and Cooling
• ENERGY STAR — Ceiling Fans