Fanno
A ceiling fan doesn’t blow at you. It turns slowly up near the ceiling, and its sound comes down from above and fills the room: a soft, rolling sweep, the long blades pushing the air round in a lazy circle. This page plays Fanno’s ceiling fan live. Flip the rocker and watch it start to turn.
The sound of a fan overhead
Ceiling fans have long blades that turn far more slowly than a box or desk fan’s. Instead of a quick flutter you get a slow pulse, one long sweep after another, and the air sounds softer and darker because less of it is rushing fast. The motor sits up in the housing, so its hum is faint. Fanno’s ceiling fan follows the real thing: the slowest blade rhythm of its four fans, the top of the air rolled away, and a quieter motor than its box fan. Each sweep is made as it plays, so no two are quite alike.
Why you hear the room as much as the fan
A ceiling fan is the one fan whose sound mostly reaches you by bouncing. It’s above you, not pointed at you, so much of what you hear has come off the walls, the floor and the ceiling first. That’s why a ceiling fan sounds wide and soft rather than close and sharp. Fanno gives its ceiling fan more room than any of its other fans, so the sweep has that same spread-out, filled-in quality, as if the fan were turning over the middle of the bed.
Who misses a ceiling fan
If you’ve lived somewhere warm, you may know the sound well: the fan that runs over the bed from May to September, turning on low all night. Then you move, or winter comes, and the room feels too quiet. A real ceiling fan in January means a cold draft. Fanno’s makes the same sweep with no breeze at all, so you keep the sound and lose the chill. It’s also a good match for hotel rooms and guest beds, where the quiet is unfamiliar and every door in the hallway stands out.
Setting the sweep
This page runs the ceiling fan at speed 6 on Pink. Pink suits it: it keeps the sweep soft without making it muffled. On the app’s dial, low settings slow the blades right down to a gentle, unhurried pulse, and higher ones quicken the sweep and fill out the air, like a ceiling fan on high in August. Somewhere from 3 to 6 sounds most like a fan left on overnight.
If you’d like it darker, press Brown for a deep, distant roll. White brings up the hiss of the air and makes the fan sound nearer.
Overhead all night, with the app
On a phone, this page is for listening before you download. iPhone browsers stop the sound once the screen locks; the free Fanno app doesn’t, and the Lock Screen has play and pause. The app’s sleep timer knob runs from a quarter of an hour to two hours and fades the ceiling fan out instead of cutting it off. Night mode turns the panel dark for the bedroom, and the Blade texture fader, from 0 to 10, sets how strongly you hear each slow sweep.
Fanno is free on iPhone and iPad. There are no ads, there’s no account, it collects no data, and it works without a connection.