Saturday, May 3, 2008

Buying the Right Ceiling Fans For Your Home

The two primary concerns to address when looking for the right ceiling fans for your home are style and function. A related concern is the quality of the ceiling fans because these fixtures have a wide range of prices available and the price usually reflects the quality.

Even if your home has central air conditioning, ceiling fans can be an attractive, elegant, and cost-saving addition. If your home is constructed with wood as the primary material and you have wooden flooring, ceiling fans with wooden blades that complement the type of wood used as flooring can add a real touch of class. A lighted ceiling fan mounted over the dining room table with wooden blades that match the table can provide the right decorating touch to make the dining experience more comfortable and relaxing. The light breeze generated by the fan can provide additional comfort when you are serving a number of people in a small area such as the dining room.

Ceiling fans can be used throughout the house. In a family or living room they can provide a soft breeze and even additional lighting to make reading or other leisure activities more enjoyable.

Bedrooms are ideal locations for ceiling fans. A soft, comforting breeze can help you relax and fall asleep and can provide an enjoyable experience when you wake up in the morning.

Look in a variety of home and garden magazines for ideas regarding where and how to use ceiling fans throughout your home. Check the Internet for ceiling fan manufacturers websites. Many offer tours though a home that highlight the multitude of uses for ceiling fans. Let creativity and personal taste be your guide when deciding how to equip your home with these elegant fixtures.

Air conditioning provides cooling but it doesnt give you the cool, comforting breeze you get from a ceiling fan. A reversible ceiling fan will provide a cooling effect in the hot summer months and push warm air down from the ceiling in the cold winter months, helping you save on heating costs.

As you survey each room you are considering for a ceiling fan, keep in mind several factors. Make sure the size of the room dictates the blade width of the ceiling fan selected for that room. A lighting store, home center or Internet website that sells ceiling fans will be able to guide you in selecting the right size fan for the square footage of a particular room.

Decide if you need the additional light that is provided by a ceiling fan that includes lighting fixtures. When in doubt, select a fan that has a separate lighting kit available that can be added at a later time should you decide that you need more light.

Check out the ceiling height of the room. Low ceilings will limit the type of ceiling fans you can choose while high ceilings may require some modifications such as a down rod to install the ceiling fan so it is only 7 or 8 feet from the floor.

Make sure that the style of ceiling fan complements the dcor of the room. Ceiling fans come in a wide variety of styles and themes and you should have no trouble narrowing down your options. Finally, seriously consider a fan that can have its rotation reversed. The benefits include better cooling in the summer and better heating in the winter.

Once you have made the necessary decisions with respect to the type of ceiling fan(s) you need, its time to go shopping. There are a number of places that sell ceiling fans. First, there are brick and mortar stores that specialize in lighting. Many carry only one or two brands and this will limit your choices. In addition, lighting stores usually arent large enough to have all the models displayed, which further limits your choices. Also, keep in mind that many lighting stores need to sell at or close to retail in order to pay for the overhead it takes to operate a store.

Finally, you need to be cautious when dealing with salespeople. While many are conscientious and put the customers needs first, there are some that will try to push an overstocked model on you or sell you a fan that gives them a higher commission. On the positive side, when you are dealing with a local brick and mortar store, customer service is usually good and you can often get some pretty good advice from employees that are familiar with these products.

I have mixed feelings about buying ceiling fans from home centers. Many home centers appeal to buyers because they believe that this is the place to get discounts and save money. While this may be true, the quality of the merchandise that is available may be the trade-off.

Home centers often buy in large lots and get a good wholesale discount from the manufacturer. However, many specialize in the lower cost (and perhaps lower quality) fans. The selection is often limited and the expertise of the salespeople is often limited as well. You might get lucky and find just what youre looking for at one of these centers, but my guess is that what they have available will dictate what you will more than likely end up purchasing.

The Internet has some definite advantages when shopping for ceiling fans. It also has some disadvantages. On the positive side, you can find just about every make and model on any number of websites. Because its relatively easy to list an item, many websites display everything the ceiling fan manufacturer has to offer. Most good websites will also provide specifications and other relevant information about each listing.

Being sensitive to the overhead issues at brick-and-mortar stores, some manufacturers and drop shippers who wholesale to websites, add a percentage onto the wholesale prices they offer to make the website pricing somewhat more competitive. Still and all, you can usually get the best price for a specific ceiling fan on a website. Most websites make it easy to buy and many transactions can be finalized in just a few minutes.

On the somewhat negative side, when you are dealing with a website, you have no face-to-face contact with the seller and so that intuitive sense of trust or not to trust is missing. In addition, while most websites have come a long way in trying to build buyer confidence in their integrity and reliability, this is sometimes still a factor.

Also, it may take a week or so to get what you paid for when you order a ceiling fan online.

Customer service is the final issue. When you have a problem, how do you know whether or not the website vendor will be responsive. Make sure there is a telephone number on the website that will allow you to talk to a live person. This will go a long way in building trust and getting problems resolved to everyones satisfaction.

Whatever you decide to do in terms of buying ceiling fan(s) keep in mind that it is a great investment in a whole variety of ways.

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