Category Archives: Ceiling Fans

Your Ultimate Ceiling Fan Buying Guide

Ceiling fans represent one of the most efficient options families have to keep their homes cool. They’re also an excellent tool for reducing the strain placed on a home’s HVAC system during extreme seasonal weather. Installing a ceiling fan is a straightforward process for any electrician, handyman, or trained professional, but there are some factors to consider before ordering a fan and having it installed. Here’s what you should take into account.

Fan Location and Expected Use

A fan manufacturer will use different components for their fans based on the fan’s expected installation location. If you plan on installing a fan in an outdoor environment like a porch or a humid area like a bathroom, you’ll want to select a fan designed for use in wet environments. Conversely, if you plan on installing your fan in a living room, the fan you choose should be designed for that purpose. Furthermore, you’ll want to consider the dimensions of a room when selecting a fan to ensure it’s the right size to cool the space efficiently.

Fan Features and Price Point

Modern fans come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and their price points may vary wildly depending on the materials used, as well as features like the noise level and size. If you’re upgrading the fans in your home from older models, you may want to investigate options like integrated LED lights and remote-controlled lights. Some fans are even controllable via your smartphone.

Getting the Most From a Fan After Installation

As with any device with moving parts, part of what keeps a fan in good working condition is maintaining it with regular dusting. You should clean fans each season so dirt and dust don’t build up on the fan and cause operational problems. Also, remember to switch the rotation of the fan each summer and winter. The fan should normally run in a counterclockwise direction in the summer and a clockwise direction during the winter. Changing the direction ensures the fan blades push air in the correct direction to cool or warm the room.

According to statistics, the average American household spends $1,945 on lighting, heating, cooling, electronics, and appliances each year. You’ll likely find that adding one or more new ceiling fans will reduce your utility bills and improve your comfort. Contact Premier Lighting today to learn more about our extensive selection of top-quality fans!

Posted: 1/27/24

What Rooms in Your House Need a Ceiling Fan?

The decisions you make have a big impact on your monthly energy expenses. According to Spark Energy, Energy Star programs have lowered electricity usage by five trillion kilowatt-hours since 1992. If you’re pondering an indoor lighting upgrade, here are the rooms where you should install a ceiling fan.

Dining Room

Dining rooms are a hot spot when it comes to entertaining guests, whether you’re sitting down for dinner or enjoying a few drinks while playing a card game. You need to have lighting above your dining table, so you may as well opt for a ceiling fan that can help you stay cool during the summer. During the winter, you can reverse your dining room ceiling fan for energy savings.

Living Room

Most homeowners spend a lot of time in the living room. Whether you’re watching a movie with your family or having several friends over for a Super Bowl party, you can keep the air circulating and keep everyone cool with a ceiling fan. Living room ceiling fans are also a great way to keep air circulating throughout the central part of your home, which keeps the air from getting stale.

Bedrooms

When you’re installing light fixtures in bedrooms, you may as well opt for light fixtures that include ceiling fans. Bedroom ceiling fans aren’t a whole lot more expensive than traditional lighting fixtures, and they’re a great way for everyone to stay cool without cranking up the AC during the summer. Some fans even have remote controls, timers, and other convenient features.

Outdoor Living Spaces

Do you have a sunroom or an outdoor living space where you spend a lot of time? Indoor lighting is a key part of a good outdoor living space, but most sunrooms and other indoor-outdoor spaces have ceiling fans to keep occupants cool. If you’re just coming in from the swimming pool to relax, you’ll love having a swimming pool in the indoor-outdoor part of your home.

Upgrading your home starts with figuring out what you need in each room, and that’s especially important when it comes to indoor lighting. Choosing the right light fixtures can help you get the most out of every room in your home. If you want to upgrade your home with ceiling fans, call Premier Lighting today or check out our selection.

Posted: May 4

Kitchen Ceiling Light Fixtures – Make Your Ceiling Fixtures Shine

It’s amazing what a little light will do. Light really makes a room open up, makes it more inhabitable, more welcoming, and more useful. This is true even in the kitchen. Working in an under-lit kitchen can be a frustrating experience, while good lighting can make the kitchen the center of the home. When you think about where to place lighting in the kitchen, think about the tasks that you most commonly perform there.

Adjustable

Doing all the chopping, slicing, dicing, mixing, and other tasks associated with cooking means that work areas should be well-lit and clean. Under cabinet lighting is one option, but so is adjustable lighting over a work surface. Think about placing a series of adjustable hanging lamps over your primary work surface. This is similar to task lighting, just like the adjustable lamps in a workshop.

Recessed

You may have thought of lighting above the stove and above the sink, but what about recessed lighting? Recessed lighting gives a welcoming and warm reception to the entire kitchen, softly illuminating cabinets and surfaces. Instead of little pockets of light, get that overall glow with recessed lighting fixtures.

Ceiling

Ceiling fans keep the air moving and comfortable in a room where the heat is almost always on, whether it’s a burner on the stove or an oven full of cookies. One – or even two – can keep things cool, especially on a hot Scottsdale, AZ day. It’s rare to find a ceiling fan these days that isn’t also a light.

Rheostat

When it comes to a breakfast bar, mornings might need a subtler light to help you adjust to the day. Ceiling light fixtures with a rheostat (a “dimmer switch”) might seem like “mood lighting,” but once you try a lower, more relaxing light, you’ll find that your start is relaxed and mellow.

And remember, kitchen lighting doesn’t have to be stuffy or boring. Modern ceiling light fixtures come in a variety of styles. More than lighting, these fixtures are home decor products that will add charm and uniqueness to the heart of your house. If you’re not sure what look you want for your kitchen, check out Premier Lighting. Stop by one of our stores in Tucson or Scottsdale, AZ or check out our website to get ideas that will make your kitchen just as unique and individual as you are.

5 Tips for Choosing the Best Ceiling Light Fixtures

When upgrading your home in Phoenix or nearby Scottsdale AZ, floors and walls are important. However, unless your home light fixtures brighten the room, your decorating efforts could suffer greatly. Some of the most effective lighting comes from above, and choosing ceiling lights is not always easy. Here are five tips to help simplify the process.

Determine Diameter

Before you visit interior design stores for lighting, you need to know the right size diameter. Measure the room and take the sum of the width and length. For instance, a 12 by 10-foot room gives you 22 feet. By scaling this number to inches, you get a reasonable estimate for diameter size. In this case, a 22-inch chandelier is a good choice.

Table Size Matters

If your dining room table is 48 inches wide, choose a chandelier as large as 36 inches in diameter (table width minus 12 inches). When not certain about size, larger is better than smaller.

Ceiling Height Matters Too

If you are installing a chandelier above your dining room table, make sure it does not extend any farther than two and one-half feet (30 inches) from the tabletop (standard eight-foot ceiling). For bedrooms, your hanging light should provide seven feet of headspace. This ensures the light does not get in the way.

Do Not Forget Design

Some people fall in love with a particular fixture, but this is not always a good idea. If your home is contemporary, you should stick with modern fixtures for ceilings.

Ask Your Lighting Professionals

For the highest quality ceiling light fixtures, visit Premier Lighting’s Showroom. You can find us in Tucson and close to Phoenix in nearby Scottsdale AZ. We can help you choose the best lighting and decor for your home.

Ceiling Fans in Design Plans

Ceiling fans have made their way onto interior decorators’ blacklists for their maligned aesthetics and their noisiness. The industry is determined to turn them into style assets, so today’s offerings are sleek, contemporary, and unobtrusive. Your fan should be a work of art, and designers are up for the challenge.

Exquisite and Intelligent

High ceilings and large rooms demand a dramatic look proportional to the environment. You’ll find a number of new designs that are bold and worthy enough of being a room’s focal point. Not all new models are quite as domineering. Some are slim, sleek, and subtle, blending into the walls and ceiling in style. Sophistication isn’t everything. Intelligence is a necessary part of today’s smart building, so you might want a fan that turns itself on automatically. Learning thermostats can get to know your preferences and deliver a personalized service, and motion sensors keep your utility bills down.

Design Solutions

Fan blades are frequently treated as design features in themselves, but if you want a model that betrays its purpose, a caged design will allow your fan to masquerade as a light fitting or an artwork.

Silence

Stability and improved industrial design allow today’s fans to operate silently. Light fans are quiet fans, but their primary purpose should not be ignored. Regardless of how pretty your design-first model is, it’s useless if it doesn’t cool down your residents. Design excellence also translates into lower utility bills. Varying speeds can mimic outdoor breezes, while sleep mode adjusts itself throughout the night. In winter, some fans can be adjusted to generate and distribute heat from your heating and cooling system.

In Arizona and the hot deserts of the southwest, ceiling fans assist evaporative coolers. Buildings cooled by AC benefit from ceiling fans as amenities, as moving air cools those present in a room.

Discuss your lighting and ceiling fan options with one of our expert designers at Premier Lighting.

3 Reasons Fans Aren’t Just for Indoors

Ceiling fans are becoming a trendy and functional accessory this summer, and we have the top three reasons why! Outdoor ceiling fans will help you save time and energy; they will also contribute to the aesthetic appeal of your home:

1. Energy efficient: Installing outdoor ceiling fans can help to preserve energy. Homeowners are able to sit outside on their patio and/or deck and relax under their fan without being forced to sit in the air conditioned house all of the time. They can also be controlled via remote and placed in various areas around and in the house. This helps keep the light switch from being flipped on and off and gives the homeowner some ease when utilizing the fans.

2. Whimsical appeal: If you are a decorating fanatic, outdoor ceiling fans are a great addition to any blooming exterior décor. They bring in attention and add to the overall appeal of your back or front yard. Take our Minka Aire Bronze Outdoor Fan with its large leaf like blades for instance; this fixture will give any outdoor deck that “wow” factor. Outdoor ceiling fans will keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter. This can be done by changing the direction of the fan blades to push the air up or down.

3. Low maintenance: Outdoor ceiling fans can be cleaned in a jiff. They may take a little more precision to clean than indoor ceiling fans do, but a good wipe down before the dirt starts to build up will prevent your fan from getting too grimy. Fans are a relatively low maintenance way to keep cool during the summer and turn your outdoor space into a usable outdoor room.

Ceiling fans don’t just keep the inside of a home cool. They can definitely be a useful asset to any outdoor area. Here at Premier Lighting, we have a vast selection of outdoor ceiling fans that we think will make a great addition to your outside space. Take a look at our fixtures here and come into our showrooms for a free consultation.

Modern and Hi-Tech Lighting Options

Are you ready to bring your home into the 21st century? With the help of our remote light switch controls and modern light fixtures, you can do just that.

Your home is probably already well equipped with hi-tech devices such as flat screen TVs, iPod speakers and fancy coffee makers, but now it is time to bring that modern technology to your lighting.

At Premier Lighting, we offer remote controls for your light fixtures, as well as for your indoor and outdoor ceiling fans. What better way to show off how tech-savvy you are to your friends and family than by changing the speed of your ceiling fan or by turning a light on or off from your seat at the dinner table? Not only are these remotes hi-tech and fun to show off, they are also convenient and practical.

Want your home to look and feel hi-tech in addition to actually being it? Choosing modern and sleek fixtures will give your home that instant updated feel. We have a wide selection of fixtures that fit the bill. For instance, our Kichler Nickel Ceiling Fan is just one of the many fixtures we carry that can bring any existing room into the 21st Century. With its sleek lines and nickel finish, this ceiling fan is sure to make a statement. Want more inspiration? Browse through our “Modern Lighting” Pinterest board for more ideas on how to update your space.

By adding some fun and useful gadgets to your home, as well as sleek and updated fixtures, your home is sure to look and feel modern.

Update Your Fan to Keep Cool and Stay Stylish

Ceiling fans do not last forever, and as times change so do the styles. Whether you like it or not, most ceiling fans become the focal point in the room in which they are installed. They are large, hard to miss and typically installed on a white or off-white ceiling. That being said, it is vital that your ceiling fan match the style of the rest of your home to avoid committing one of the worst interior design crimes possible; mixing non-mixable styles.

Want your ceiling fan to disappear?

Ceiling fans come in a variety of styles, colors and sizes. If you do not want your ceiling fan to be such a major focal point in your room, choose a fixture that blends into the ceiling it is installed up against. If your ceiling is white, choose a simple white fan that will blend in.

Want your ceiling fan to stand out?

Ensure that your ceiling fan does not blend in against the ceiling it is installed up against, and it will become the focal point you were hoping for. Choose a ceiling fan that matches the style of the rest of your home. Whether traditional, modern, contemporary or southwestern, there is a ceiling fan that matches that style.

The choice is yours, but in Arizona homes are filled with ceiling fans. Rather than hiding them and trying to pretend that they are not there, it has become increasingly popular to treat your fans as you would any other accessory (such as a table lamp or side table) and choose something that compliments the rest of the room.

With our large selection of various styles, sizes and colors, no matter what type of room you have, a ceiling fan is always a viable and stylish option.

Where to Put a Ceiling Fan

Unlike states where summer temperatures stay below 90 degrees, Arizona is known for its exceptionally hot temperatures. Because of this, homeowners and builders tend to put a ceiling fans in more rooms than not. But how can you properly decide a where to put a ceiling fan? The answer is not as complicated as you might think. You will want to put a ceiling fan in a room if:

• You spend a lot of time in that room (i.e. the bedroom or family room)
• The room faces East or West – East and West facing rooms tend to get much hotter than North and South facing rooms because they get the most direct sunlight
• You want to kill two birds with one stone and gain strong overhead lighting and air flow
• The room gets exceptionally warm throughout the day

Once you have figured out which rooms to put ceiling fans in, you’ll want to decide where in that room you want to install the fan. For smaller square rooms, the answer is easy. Put the fan smack dab in the center of the room. However, for abnormally shaped or extremely large rooms, a bit more thought is required. For abnormally shaped spaces, place your ceiling fan centered between the two farthest apart walls. If the room is extremely long, or you have an open floor plan where one large space acts as a few separate rooms, multiple fans may be required. In this case, treat each “area” of the space as its own room and place ceiling fans appropriately.

Our experts can help you decide which rooms need fans and where those fans should be placed to get you the best air flow possible. By installing ceiling fans in your home, you can reduce your carbon footprint and increase the airflow throughout your home, while also bringing in another element that will allow you to show off your homes style.

Ceiling Fans 101

Ceiling fans come with two benefits: first and foremost, they provide an effective and quick way to cool down a space and secondly, they provide ample over head lighting. Ceiling fans have become more and more appealing throughout the years, so the days of choosing a fan simply because it will be the least visible are finally over. Ceiling fans can now be a statement piece in your room, or compliment the rest of your décor.

How high should my ceiling fan hang?

In rooms with ceilings taller than 10 feet, the ceiling fan should hang 8 or 9 feet above the floor. A longer downrod may be necessary to achieve this height. Fan manufactures have optional down rods to make this possible.

Can I hang a ceiling fan from a plastic junction box?

A ceiling fan must always be hung from a metal junction box. A plastic box will eventually crack with the vibration of a ceiling fan and can cause the fan to fall. A reinforced junction box can typically be utilized for this purpose. Most homes already have them in place in the dining room and where ceiling fans are installed.

What size ceiling fan do I need?

For maximum efficiency choose a fan to fit the size of your room. For a small area, like a bathroom, choose a 29 to 42 inch blade span fan. Average to large sized rooms can be sufficiently cooled with a fan that measures 52 inches. For large rooms, utilize a fan with a 54+ inch span to sufficiently cool the area.

What size down rod do I need?

For maximum airflow, choose a down rod length that will allow your ceiling fan to sit 7-10 feet off of the ground. The chart below is a good starting point, though rooms with higher ceilings tend to be larger and therefore require larger fans, which are not always supported by a certain length down rod.

If I hang a ceiling fan from a sloped ceiling will it hang straight?

If the slope of your ceiling is less than 30 degrees, the fan will hang straight. Be sure that the placement of the fan on the slope will allow adequate room for the blades. A downrod of at least 18 inches usually takes care of this issue. Most manufacturers stock an optional sloped ceiling adapter for ceilings that have a steeper slope.

Can I use any ceiling fan outdoors?

A fan made specifically for the outdoors should be used. Outdoor ceiling fans have sealed motors to protect it from moisture and dirt, the blades are made of special all-weather material to prevent cracking and warping and the fan will be labeled for “Damp Location”. Any added light kits must also be specifically for “Damp Location” use. If the fan will hang in a location where it might get wet, it must be a fan labeled “Wet Location”, and it pairs with a light kit specifically for “Wet Location” use.

Does it matter which direction a ceiling fan turns?

In the summer a ceiling fan should turn clockwise to create a breeze, and in the winter it should be set in the reverse position (counter-clockwise) to circulate the hot air that rises back down to the floor area.