How to Shop for a Ceiling Fan
Updated Dec 10, 2022
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Need a new ceiling fan? Been there. I’ve personally installed at least nine ceiling fans over the years—the first few with a colleague from This Old House magazine, others alongside pro electricians I was interviewing, and the last four on my own at home. In 2011, I even disassembled a fan motor while researching a ceiling-fan feature for Popular Mechanics; with the team there, I collected data and tried to chart the exact recommended blade diameter per square footage of a room and determined the ideal blade count, digging deep to find the true sweet spot of a fan’s cubic feet per minute (CFM) of air movement.
