Absolutely get fans. Casablanca (and others, I suppose) make a model with dimmable lights. On other hand, don't get them for everywhere now; instead put up an inexpensive ceiling fixture, and then next summer decide after living there. You can always install fans later (have the proper support put in the ceiling now).

I don't think you'll be sorry. We have fans in all bedrooms. It's cheapter than running the AC all the time.

I live in the south and have them in every bedroom. They save on electric as you can have the AC a little higher with a fan.

I bought an old fan from the forty's (I think) from an antique shop and that thing is wonderful. I just sit it on the floor and it really works great and looks great. I wouldn't take any amount of money for that thing.

I live in the deep south too and have ceilings fans as well. And they are coming down, I just don't like the way they look. But my ceilings are 14 or more feet high in my rooms.

Welcome to the south!

Have the electrical and supports put in but don't install them if you aren't sure. And certainly there is NO reason to have lights on them if you don't want them.

From what I have read about energy conservation, etc. fans are only useful if someone is in the room- they don't cool the air, so you are spending money on wasted energy to have them running unless someone is in the room.

I have fans in all my bedrooms, also my master bath, and I am so grateful that I put them in! It makes a big difference in the summers when the air is so hot and stale.

I'm in East Texas. Sleeping (most months of the year) without a ceiling fan isn't an option :o Most every room in the house has one, including the kitchen and master bathroom. I prefer my fans without light kits tho. Can you do recessed lighting and lamps? In the past, I've chosen ceiling fans that were fashion statments...part of the room's decor. This time, I wanted them to blend with the ceiling and disappear. I think they're very pretty but understated (and MUY comfortable!)
Monica :)

We're in the South and we have ceiling fans in every bedroom as well as in the master bath.

The only rooms without one are the kitchen, DR, formal LR and other bathrooms. We really make good use of the fans during the warm months and it keeps the electric bill down.

I live in the southeast and I have fans in den, bedrooms, porch, materbath and the pool house. It's so nice to open the house in the spring and fall and let the breeze blow through. I would hate to have to live without them.

We finished our home 3 yrs ago. I was in charge of light fixtures & ceiling fans (selection). I have the same opinion as Monica and I think it worked. Going with white was my strategy as well. Whether you have them installed now or later, be sure you know what size fan to put in each room. You will really draw attention to the fixture if it is not in proportion, or hanging down too far...YUCK.

I live on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and ceiling fans (no lights) are in every bedroom, the media room, living room, and two on the back porch. We have high ceilings and spent a lot of time choosing the right ones to complement our rooms. The lighting company where we made our light and fan selections had a tremendous selection to choose from. Our master bedroom's fan is on year round, except the rare cold mornings when it's just too much. I am envious of those of you who have them in the Master Bath. I could definitely use one there, especially in the summer.

Our house is an 1893 long skinny town house with high ceilings (11' on the first floor, 9-1/2 on the second) in hot, humid Virginia. We have the same fans precisely as Monicakm in all four upstairs bedrooms, with lights (they came with the house), and they are essential in summer to keep a light breeze moving through the house and to push the warm air down. They also help balance the heat from upstairs to down in the winter in our leaky drafty house. We keep them all on the lowest speed, and run them most of the time in summer and winter. The light and the fan are on separate switches in each room, which makes it much more flexible. I want the overheads only when I am cleaning, sewing, or ironing. Because they're white, and far enough up, I don't even notice them any more, and that little air movement makes all the difference.

We live on the water on the South Carolina coast, where it's very hot, (105+) and humid during the summer. We have 9' ceilings and fans in all bedrooms, living room, kitchen, TV lounge area, and on all outdoor porches. I wish I had them in the baths, too! They are running 24/7 and make living through the summer much more tolerable. I couldn't sleep without the fan moving the air at night in the middle of the summer, plus having the fans allows us to keep our thermostat set higher, or lower, depending on season. The only one with lights, though, is over the kitchen table, we chose to use lamps for lighting. If you don't get the fans, which I think you'll regret, at least get the overhead fixtures wired for them, and have them capped.

An oft-quoted decorating adage that has never lost it's luster or appropriateness, is this one:

Form Follows Function

Nowhere is this more apt, than when it is applied to the wonderful comfort and coolness of a nice fan circulating air....whether you live as I do, in California's Hot Central Valley, or in the humid Southeast where my family live. I love chandeliers and hanging pendants, semi-flush fixtures and even some recessed lighting. But I would not trade even one of my ceiling fans for any of that through our long hot months. Actually, my bedroom fan has only been off two days this whole winter, because I like air circulating.
Listen to your builder.

Red

We have ceiling fans in just about every room and we're in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. My biggest reason for installing them is I am very hot natured. I wanted my guests to always have the option of controlling the temp in their room. I hate when I visit someone who keeps their home very warm and I spend the night sweating because there's no fan. I have a friend that travels with her own personal fan that she tells people is for the noise, but the truth is she's menopausal and dang it, wants some CONTROL!!!

There are some really nice looking ceiling fans. You don't have to have lights on all of them if you don't want to. Pick out your own, don't just accept what the builder offers. I can't imagine not having ceiling fans.

i have a ceiling fan that i got from home depot that is gorgeous, it has a stained glass drop base on the bottom and a stained glass rim around the top with wooden blades and a dark oiled bronze base and it is beautiful, also have stained glass to match in adjoining dining room. Family room we have an alabaster glass base and top on our ceiling fan..

the builder had put those white ones with the glass shades in here, we just removed them all and gave them to habitat for humanity restore

We live on the West Coast...of Michigan - lol.
Very close to the Big Lake though, and we have ceiling fans in every room.
It can be very hot and humid here too, so it makes a big difference in the middle of the summer even up north.
When we lived in Dallas, we had them in every room there too.
We chose lights for the ones in the bedrooms because sometimes there's a need for more lighting - we use lamps 99% of the time.

Choosing the right ceiling fan: Size matters: If your fan is too large for the room, you'll get most of your air at the outer edges of the room. Too small and the air flow won't reach out far enough. Fan blade "pitch": The more pitch (angle) of the blade, the more air it will move and move it at lower speeds. Look for at least a 15 degree(maybe 14) pitch. Fan motor: Once a motor starts making unwanted noises, there's no fixing it. Look for a fan with a heavy duty motor and sealed bearings. 188mmx 15 or 20mm is good. A light weight motor can't turn those 14 to 16 degree pitched blades very long. The motor will burn up. This is just some of the info I read when researching our ceiling fan purchases during our latest remodel.
About leaving fans on 24/7 when no one is in those rooms...fans don't actually lower the temperature of a room. They just make you FEEL more comfortable because of the air moving over your body. Since we're using fans to stay cooler, more comfortable and reduce our electric bill, turning them off when no one is going to be in the room is (imo) a better solution. Hope this helps :)
bronwynsmom, do you love your Craftmade fans? I do!!M
We have 3 of them in Antique White. Perfectly matches the ceiling color in the bedroom and kitchen. The ceiling color in the master bath is a light aqua blue but the trim is color of the fan. The other 6 fans (inside and out) are "fashion statements" (lol)

Monica

Red wrote exactly what I was thinking when I read your post: "form follows function".

I live in the South, and I know that I couldn't live without my ceiling fans (sometimes beginning in March!).

Yep, another that couldn't live without my ceiling fans!! Hot, humid summers. Gosh, where can you live with out hot humid summers without harsh cold winters?????

Best thing we ever did was put one in the Masterbath - my face would be sweating by the time I got out of the shower & dried my hair!! Made it hard to apply make-up! Ideally, I would have loved a gorgeous chandelier but the fan is the best ever!

I put them in my guest room, too. Many people get so accustomed to sleeping with the fan on - they have a difficult time without one.

Smiles:)

Yes, Monica, we love them. They are quiet and well balanced, and unobtrusive, and I am so glad that they were well chosen before we got here! Very good advice on how to make the choice, too.
Scoobyruby, I laughed at your makeup and humidity comment. In my youth, I worked in Washington, DC, which is a horrid swamp in late summer...my apartment was small, and I had to keep a small fan on the back of the john to blow on my face...without it, I would have melted off my makeup as fast as I put it on!

Another lady from the South who loves ceiling fans in the bedrooms! We went with plain, white fans with remote control and dimmers ~ no hanging cord, easy to use from the bed. We weren't sure whether we would need them in the main living areas, so had those areas reinforced and wired for fans and then, we capped them.

We found remote-control, white, contractor-grade fans at Lowe's for the bedrooms and couldn't be happier with them.

Barbara

If you don't think you want them I agree to add the wiring and such but install them later if you change your mind. We live on the coast in hot, humid NC. We have ceiling fans in every room but don't use them in the bedrooms. (sometimes ds/17 does but he likes to sleep under mounds of covers year round.) However, we all sleep with fans running on the floor! They aren't attractive but we can direct the air away from us and really like the white noise. I personally don't like to sleep under the running ceiling fan. I am guilty of keeping the a/c running full blast though.

Another southern gal here. I absolutely LOVE a ceiling fan over our bed. Like Red, ours is rarely turned off. I'm so used to it, I'd probably have a hard time sleeping without it.
I will say that for us (only the two of us) we didn't find it necessary to put them in the guest rooms. We also use one in the great room, though not so often as it gets wonderful cross breezes. We have one in the sunroom that is used very often also.

It's not necessary to get the lights - you can always use lamps.

Another thought - if your power goes out in warm (or hot!) weather, at least you have something.

I agree, they are GREAT during spring and fall - well, that little window where we don't NEED the ac. LOL

tina

I am in Phoenix. We have a fan in every bedroom, the living room, and over the kitchen table. Yes, a hanging light fixture would look much much better over the table, but doing without the fan would make it too hot to eat.

I cannot sleep in the summer without our ceiling fan.

White fans and leave the light kits out in the bedrooms, IMO. I spec'd fans that came with the light kit automatically, and hid the light kits so the contractor could not put them in. :-I

We had them almost everywhere in our last two Indiana lake houses . . . and are doing the same thing in our new Tennessee house. Loved being able to leave windows open and fans going in moderately warm weather, and loved the breezy feel when the A/C wasn't set as cool as I'd like.

In the new house, I'm sacrificing a beautiful fixture over the island because I absolutely loved being able to turn on a fan while cooking in the last two houses . . . I figure if I change my mind later, I can change it out.

Arlene

Anothern southerner here from Georgia, where the air in summer often feels like thick warm soup. Same as all the others (with no lights in most of them). I just wanted to say that fans in our bedrooms allow us to sleep with the AC off and the windows open almost every night in the summer, when we love being lulled to sleep by the wonderful chorus of evening sounds.