If you dont want to feel a breeze, you’ll want a bigger diameter fan with slower RPM

What would a fan accomplish if when sitting just a few feet below it, no air movement is felt? Unless you have it turning in the direction that blows upward, which I can't see would accomplish much. The freshness a fan produces is from being in or near the airflow. An 8 foot ceiling doesn't give you much flexibility.

Why would you need air movement when the room is unoccupied, as overnight?

Thank you both.

@Indecisiveness, to keep 18" from the nearest wall, I can go as large as 52". With with slower RPMs, does blade pitch matter?

@Elmer J Fudd This is a split level house. Before we remodeled the kitchen and removed the old ceiling fan, we ran it on low 24/7 and reversed the blade direction seasonally which helped balance the temperature throughout the living levels. Above the kitchen table is the most central location.

It would be nice if showrooms had fans wired so one could know what three speeds feels like (grimacing).

It's true and too bad that fans can't be turned on before buying them to see the airflow. But in a way one can know. My experience is that a fan turning on low speed moves very little air. I have three bedroom fans in rooms with ceilings that are 9 feet high, and one rather flush one in a living room that's one foot higher. On low speed, turning in the direction that produces a downward flow, the moving air is barely perceptible underneath and for sure not significant even a few feet or more away.

If there are significant temperature swings between different parts of your home, it might be better to give some thought as to what might be causing that and what, if anything, might make that better. I can't imagine a slowly turning fan accomplishes much but you're there and you know.

The other option is to zone the HVAC system. The cost benefit isn't there because warm air still rises and cool air still drops to the lower level. The cost to heat and A/C this house are not great. My thought is that a fan will keep air moving and mixing as subtle as it may be. I certainly could be wrong.

IMO ceiling fans anywhere where you are serving or working with food is never a good idea.

Hot air always rises, very true. It's not unique to a split level house and can be a challenge even with two story houses. One solution if it's a real problem, if you have air returns on the top level, is to run the HVAC blower periodically. Many thermostats offer a "circulate" setting that runs the fan intermittently, sometimes up to 30% of the time. Doing that will shorten the life of the fan though. Unless the problem is extreme, the solution may be to just live with it. Unless a fan is at the top of a stairwell or mounted on a cathedral ceiling or a two story internal atrium, it's unlikely to do much to even out temps between up and down.

Thank you @Hansen Wholesale I quickly looked a a few fan descriptions on your website and will spend more time later. Because I remained uncertain, I paused fan shopping. This is very helpful.

@Hansen Wholesale I'm still shopping for a ceiling fan (too many projects at the moment ) and appreciate that you pointed me to your website.

Does the wind speed have to do with blade pitch and RPMs?

Blade pitch and RPM are just two factors that determine how much wind a fan produces. Just as important is the shape and size of the blades. So a fan with a 14 degree blade pitch that has narrow blades may not produce as much breeze as a fan with a 12 degree blade pitch spinning at the same RPM that has aerodynamically designed blades or wider blades or longer blades.

Those things were important years ago when there was no data to go by as they were the only characteristics you could look at to see what's different between fans. Unfortunately, most retailers still use these factors as selling points even though there is actual data nowadays since the EPA began requiring all fans to be tested and the CFM data to be published. That's like trying to compare the components in a car that make it more fuel efficient without actually comparing the MPG reports.

Unfortunately, CFM does not tell you how fast the air is moving, only how much air is being moved. I have gone back and forth on this topic with the EPA during the creation and modifying of the legislation. Yet CFM is what they require to be published. CFM is fine if you are comparing fans of the same blade length, the fan with the hither CFM will have a higher wind speed. But what if you are trying to determine what size fan is best and you want to compare the performance of fans with various blade lengths? CFM is not a good comparison because it tells you how much air is being displaced, not how fast the air is moving or how much of a "Breeze" is being created.

If you have 2 fans of different blade spans that produce the same CFM, the smaller fan will produce a stronger breeze, but over a smaller area.

That's why I came up with the "Wind Speed Factor", which calculates the amount of breeze you might feel based on the diameter of the fan and the CFM it produces. So it's a comparison of wind speed rather than air displacement.

With this comparison at your disposal, you no longer need to hope that a fan is better because it has a steeper blade pitch and higher RPM.