I’m a 47 yr old dad. So I admittedly am saying this with judgment.
Uh. No duh.
(I get it some people just don’t know this for a variety of reasons. I just can’t fathom why).
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It depends on your house construction and ventilation design but I suggest getting an IR thermometer and checking for yourself. In a large room with poor airflow and high ceilings I have measured a 6-8 degree difference from the top to bottom of an interior wall. Don’t measure exterior walls or ceilings as that will be affected more by the outside rather than just the inside air temperature.
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Please consider only using the fan if you are in the room to benefit from it.
Moving air across human skin disrupts the “heat envelope” that humans shedding BTUs will typically have around them.
See also:
So much wasted electricity when fans run to “cool” a room and there’s no one in the room to benefit from it. I see ceiling fans running 24/7 on Texas porches–empty porches. Not a soul. Argh.
I got a fine lecture when I was in the Netherlands about how they were able to keep their demand on the energy grid low and avoid building more and more nuclear power plants. The Dutch don’t waste electricity, I was told. Having seen for months how most Dutch live, I’m inclined to agree.
The basics on how to cool a room or a house, and yeah ceiling fans are one part of the strategy:
Based on building science and a ton of occupancy data. Strongly recommended.
ETA: added “see also”
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Calder would have approved.
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Depends on the hemisphere, too. Reverse everything again when you move from the northern to the southern. Do it when you flip the toilets so you don’t forget.
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Some ceiling fan makers offer (at additional cost, of course) “upgrade” wall-installed controllers and remotes that include direction control. Ours in our bedroom has that option (which we learned about later, but didn’t take); all I have to do is stand on the bed and reach up, so.
A fan mixes the air (regardless of direction) bringing the temperature everywhere to the average of whatever gradient you started out with. If you draw warm air up in the center of the room, it’s going to get pushed back down at the edges of the room, not because it cooled off, but because the fan continues to drive the air.
Should you stir your sauce clockwise and your iced tea counterclockwise? It doesn’t matter. You’re trying to distribute what heat you do have evenly.
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If you wipe them off with dryer sheets the dust and grime will cling to the blades less and it’s pretty easy to use them like a dust rag if you can reach the blades.
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Did anyone else notice in the video that the fan started turning clockwise when he said it was turning counter clockwise and then again when he said the opposite.
counter rotation
The thing that happened to you which led to you learning it hasn’t happened to them.
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Every time I’ve switched my ceiling fan to the correct winter orientation, all I ever got was a very uncomfortable cool draft circulating down the walls and throughout the room.
I also have an unrelated problem in that the fan that came with my home works only by remote control, and, apparently, something nearby operates on the same frequency. Quite often, I’ll come into the room to find the fan speedily whirring away as if it’s about to take-off. And the crap battery the remote uses only lasts about a week.
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Agreed. Most especially not from the 1930s!
So lucky that during the lockdown you have your own hot yoga studio. 
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Harvard says reversing the fan can be actually counterproductive.
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Does your comfort level change depending on fan speed?
A short experiment:
-
Breathe on the back of your hard. Blow very slowly. How does that feel?
-
Breathe on the back of your hard. Blow fast, like your trying to blow out birthday candles on a cake. How does that feel?
If your answer to #1 is “warm” and to #2 is “cool-ish” (for a given value of cool, I know human exhalations emanate from a warm human body), then you may have some luck with setting your fan to the lowest possible speed to minimize discomfort.
You have probably figured all this out already. It’s a fun trick though to teach little kids though, and I admit that until my DH made me run my own experiment, I didn’t really get how fan speed is so crucial.
This week, we are looking at 100°+ temps here in Central Texas (38°C ish). You can bet that even though we are lucky to have air conditioning (set about as high as we can tolerate because our electric bills are high), we will be having our ceiling fans all on in the rooms we are in. I am contemplating adding one to our kitchen, for the first time in 22 years, because dang, it’s hot in there. I did the dishes at midnight because it was too hot to do 'em any time sooner. Was still pretty sweaty.
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might you not apply this to washing machine spin cycles… just a thought
https://www.dyson.co.uk/support/journey/troubleshooting/50515-02.html
in other news…
I think that’s why after moving from TX to MD, for several years I had trouble getting east & west reversed. Not mixed up – consistently reversed. I guess it had to do with moving from the (relative) center of the continent to its (relative) edge and on a map, east mostly equates to “the ocean.” Just recently I realized I was no longer doing this.
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In the Southern part of the US once the dew point starts cresting past 60F there is simply too.muxh humdity in the air to use outside air. Right now the dew point is about 65Fwith a high of 85F (putting the humidity at it’s lowest point around 50%). Tonight the temp drops to 66F and humidity jumps to 95%. 66 degrees is about where I keep the house in the winter except the humidity is sub 40%. A good portion of the power used in the air conditioning system is simply to remove the moisture in the air.
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I think a lot of that depends on the design. Here you see lots of houses with forced air heat and cooling. This means that in one season the air is coming from the wrong direction to circulate properly. The air handler will do a decent enough job assuming there are not a lot of obstacles like furniture, but a ceiling fan set in the correct flow direction certainly helps.
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Not trying to answer for @mdavis…just adding my thought:
Whether it’s standardized or not, what I like about @mdavis ‘s comment is that if you understand the principle, then you don’t have to remember any rule. And if you do run into any non-standardized (perhaps they’re different overseas? 
), you won’t be tripped up by blindly following a rule. Plus, of course, it’s always fun/satisfying to know and understand the reasons behind a rule, IMO 
[“you” = “one”, “anyone”]
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