We have one and we hate it.

The bulbs do not give off enough light to make it useful.

Our ceiling is 18 feet and the fan is about 12 feet off the floor.

lsst- You hate the ceiling fan in general or the uplight?

We have a vaulted ceiling that we were planning on putting in 2 ceiling fans for the main source of light. Similar situation - 18' high ceiling with fan at 12' off the floor. Does your fan wobble?

johnstaci,
Both, LOL
I expected the lights to put out more light. Even with the max watt bulbs, it only gives a "night light" effect.
It does not wobble and I have not noticed the shadows from the blades.
If you have a balcony overlooking the family room, make sure the top of the uplight looks nice. I could not see the top of the display at the showroom so did not notice the top of the fan until I could see it from the balcony.
I think it is basically too far from the ceiling and too far from the floor to be effective. We did go with a very large fan so I am disappointed. The globe to the light on the bottom of the fan is a gold tone so I know that dims it some.
I hope to have it changed out in a year or so. I have not yet as it will be a pain to do.
I do not mean to be negative but I wished I had done my homework and asked more questions before my fan purchase.

We have 3 of them with uplights. Two of the rooms have vaulted 16 1/2' ceilings with the fans about 10' from the floor. We don't have any problems with wobbling. Like lsst, our uplights use little night light-type bulbs and don't put off anything more than ambient light. It's very pretty, but not terribly useful. The downlights do light the room, but I also use a lot of lamps.

We have the Palladian fans by Ellington.

Here is a link that might be useful: Palladian fans

I have 2 minka delanos:

Great looking fans, really move the air. I replaced the tiny incan bulbs in the uplights [8 in each, IIRC] with wee little extra long life CFLs from HD. Mine are 23 feet up, so the light isn't exactly bright, but does help.

The downside with the Delano is that the downlight is a pair of small halogen bulbs. They throw good light, but when they burn out, I doubt I'll replace them-- too much trouble to get all the way up there.

The Delano also doesn't have reverse direction control from the switch, you have to access the fan itself.

Ours is like the one that oruboris posted except it's the Minka Volterra.

{{gwi:1402429}}

We have this fan from Home Depot. I get a lot of nice comments on it. The bottom light is controlled by the switch and the top is controlled by remote control.

I like the light it gives off.... esp. since the bottom bulb is now burnt out and we can't manage to get a ladder up there to change it. Lord help us when the top one burns out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hampton Bay 54 In. 5-Blade Fan, Vintage Cherrywood Finish, Venetian Scavo Glass, Light Kit

We have several fans with uplights in our bedrooms and to be honest, they look pretty and make for good "ambience" but give off no usable light whatsoever!

Thanks everyone. It sounds like the general consensus is that uplighting gives off an ambiance (which is what I wanted against our wood ceiling). lsst, I'm glad you mentioned the look from above as we have a loft that would be looking across and down to the fan. I'll be sure to look at the fan from above before purchasing. I'm not really expecting the downlight to give off a lot of light either, but I also will be using a lot of lamps as persnickity design mentioned. Our ceiling is 15', which seems to be shorter than any of yours. We were thinking of putting the fan at 12' -- does that height seem about right?
mightyanvil, is there a shadow problem if you have both the uplight and the downlight, which is what I would like?
Thanks to all of you who showed pictures or gave me links - they are all beautiful and helped me a lot.

We purchased a Hunter fan called Ranier with an uplight and a downlight for our master bedroom in our last renovation, and we liked it so much, we purchased two more just like it for our new house (one in the master and one in the guest bedroom).

My husband especially loves the uplight for the "nightlight" effect in the evening and the fact that when you switch the light off, fades out gradually, giving you time to get from the switch (or the bathroom or wherever) to bed before the room goes dark.

It's also not especially expensive (I got the second two for $299 at Home Depot.com - the first for more through Direct Buy). But I've gotten a lot of compliments on them . . . .