Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Interactive Ceiling Fan Ideas

The inventor Philip Diehl produced the first electric ceiling fan in 1882.


Whether you are decorating a room for a child or just looking to make an interior space more festive and functional, an interactive ceiling fan can be an exciting addition to your home. Unlike traditional ceiling fans that just spin around hour after hour, offering little in terms of creativity or visual interest, interactive ceiling fans draw people in with their captivating physical characteristics. If you are thinking of installing an interactive ceiling fan, or remodeling an existing fan to make it interactive, there are several ideas that can help.


High-Tech Ceiling Fan


While the majority of ceiling fans are "interactive" in the sense that you can turn them on or off with the flick of switch or pull of a chain, not all of them have the same level of responsiveness as others. Some models, for example, have multiple speed settings, so you can set the fan at a low, medium or high setting depending on how much air movement you want to generate. However, for a truly interactive experience, consider installing a modern ceiling fan that has all of the bells and whistles. As the home improvement and do-it-yourself resource website Home Tips notes, some models feature wireless remote controls, allowing you to adjust the fans, or turn then on or off from the comfort of a couch or chair. Other ceiling fan models actually interact with the surrounding environment, and make speed adjustments in response to temperature changes in the home.


Fan Mobile


If you are looking for an inexpensive way to keep your baby or small child entertained before bed time, a ceiling fan mobile in the bedroom may be the solution. Since the fan, at a low-speed setting, already provides the prerequisite gentle spinning for the mobile, all you need to do is attach decorations. According to the parenting resource website Parents Connect, some ideas include attaching colored paper circles to the undersides of the fan blades and hanging streamers and small stuffed animals from the blades. For an educational twist, try creating a model-universe mobile. The light in the center of the fan can serve as the sun, and you can use painted expanded polystyrene balls to represent the planets.


Airplane Fan


Since the blades of a fan already resemble the blades of a propeller, you can easily transform a ceiling fan in your child's room into a ceiling airplane. Just hang up a cardboard or poster-board body and tail section behind the fan, and add on two cardboard wings. Of course, making the plane appear sleek and perfectly contoured will be a difficult task. So as an alternative, you may want to consider purchasing a pre-fabricated airplane-style ceiling fan. As the ceiling fan review website Ceiling Fan Wizard notes, these fans feature three-bladed "propellers" just like on real airplanes.

Tags: ceiling fans, interactive ceiling, resource website