No one wants to cook in a hot, smoky kitchen. Not only is this unpleasant, but it can also harm your health. The best way to keep your kitchen cooler, cleaner, and smoke-free is to install a high-quality range hood over your cooktop.
Modern range hoods come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and finishes, so you can choose a hood that fits your practical needs and kitchen’s aesthetic.
Whether you’re remodeling your kitchen and adding a modern touch or improving your cooking experience, range hoods offer numerous benefits, from visual appeal to making your kitchen a safer space. In this article, we summarize the top benefits of having a range hood in your home.
1. Better Air Quality
Installing a range hood with the latest filtration technology helps you breathe easy in the kitchen by reducing cooking byproducts like steam, fumes, and lingering odors. When allowed to accumulate, airborne particles and contaminants can make your kitchen feel perpetually dirty, smelly, and generally unpleasant.
Gas ranges release carbon monoxide when they burn fuel, and even an electric oven can produce it during a self-clean cycle or when food burns. A hood that vents outdoors carries these gases out of the house. It reduces exposure rather than eliminating it, so run it every time you cook.
Cooking smoke and steam also set off smoke detectors. By clearing heat, steam and smoke within minutes, a hood helps reduce false smoke detector alarms, so searing a steak doesn't end with a beeping ceiling.
2. Improves Kitchen Cleanliness
Every avid cook knows how quickly oil and grease can coat every surface in a kitchen. Range hoods reduce grease messes by venting polluted air out of the kitchen and either expelling it outdoors or filtering it and sending it back into the kitchen as clean air. Ducted hoods vent air outside through ductwork and are generally stronger for heavy cooking, grease and odors. Ductless hoods, also called recirculating hoods, pull air through filters, usually charcoal, and return it to the kitchen, so those filters need replacing on a schedule. Grease filters need regular cleaning either way, and many baffle filters are dishwasher-safe.
A range hood’s air filtration process keeps your kitchen cleaner by reducing the amount of grime available to accumulate on your cabinets and cooking surfaces. It also makes the air safer to breathe, which is especially important if you or a family member have asthma or allergies. Range hoods also keep you and your family safer by reducing the risk of grease fires from buildup on your cooktop.
Match the hood to your cooktop. Common widths are 30 to 36 inches, and the hood should be at least as wide as the cooking surface. From large, canopied range hoods that hang over cooktops to wall-mounted range hoods and hoods that fit easily under cabinets, there are vent hoods to accommodate nearly any cooking space. Small kitchens, in particular, can benefit from proper ventilation because their size causes them to heat up and collect grime faster than a larger kitchen.
3. Better Cooking Experience
A high-quality range hood makes the entire cooking process easier. From prep to cleanup, a good range hood will keep your kitchen cooler and more comfortable, reduce lingering odors from cooking food, and shorten cleanup by venting away oil and grime.
If you’re cooler and feel more comfortable in your kitchen, you’re more likely to spend time there experimenting with new recipes, or simply cooking at home more often.
Variable fan speeds let you match ventilation to the meal: low for simmering soup, high for stir-fry, fajitas or searing. A powerful yet quiet hood clears the smoke from high-heat recipes like fried chicken, so you can cook them without setting off the smoke alarm.
4. Can Increase Home Values
Range hoods have been standard in kitchens since the 1960s as both an aesthetic and safety feature. Having a range hood has become so normalized that homes with high-quality range hoods can sell faster and at higher prices than those with older vent models or with no range hood at all.
Kitchens weigh heavily in buying decisions: Stoll Industries reports that 80% of home buyers list the kitchen as one of the top three most important rooms. A quality hood signals a well-equipped kitchen, and a modern one removes grease better and is easier to keep clean than an old vent or microwave combo. Add one during a renovation and you get the benefit every day, not only at resale.
Style is also an important factor when selling your home. The less work potential buyers need to do, the higher you can price your home. Many people will pay top dollar for a move-in ready home with a well-appointed kitchen.
Even if you don’t plan to sell your home anytime soon, increasing the resale value by adding a range hood has short and long-term benefits.
5. Provides More Lighting
Monitoring visual changes in your food—such as color and texture—is essential to making delicious food. While the older range hoods were purely for ventilation, modern range hood models feature useful upgrades like LED lighting. Additional lighting makes it easier to monitor food and can significantly improve the cooking experience, enabling cooks to rely on visual details to know when to flip a pancake or whether their steak is overcooked, for example.
Extra illumination from a range hood is also useful when cleaning up your kitchen, making it easier to see those transparent spatters of grease and oil.
A range hood’s smaller lights can also be money-savers, since the smaller bulbs require less energy than overhead kitchen lights. If you’re just popping in the kitchen for a snack or glass of water, you can use the range hood light and help lower your utility bills.
6. Removes Excess Heat
Whether your kitchen is large or small, cooking creates heat which can make your space stuffy and uncomfortable. Range hood ventilation helps remove excess heat from your kitchen by venting hot air out of the room and creating space for cooler air to take its place. This process can be especially helpful when you’re cooking large meals or preparing food that needs a long time or high heat to cook properly.
Airflow is measured in CFM, or cubic feet per minute. A higher CFM clears heat and steam faster, and gas ranges and heavy searing call for more of it than light cooking. Very powerful hoods can also need makeup air to replace what they exhaust, so check your local code. Not sure how much you need? See how many CFM a range hood should have.
7. Adds Style to Kitchen Designs
Though a range hood is primarily designed to filter air to increase comfort and safety while cooking, the latest range hood models also offer a variety of styles to blend seamlessly into any kitchen design. Depending on the size of your kitchen, you may want a sleek and stylish statement piece, or a more inconspicuous design that blends seamlessly into the rest of your decor. Popular range hood finishes include polished tempered glass and brushed stainless steel.
FAQs
Range Hood FAQs
Do you need a range hood with an electric stove?
Yes, it still helps. Electric cooking produces smoke, grease, steam and odors, and a hood removes them. Gas ranges add combustion gases like carbon monoxide, so ventilation matters even more there.
Is a ducted or ductless range hood better?
Ducted is generally better for heavy cooking because it vents air, heat and moisture outdoors. Ductless works when ductwork isn't possible, but its charcoal filters need regular replacement.
How much CFM do I need?
It depends on your cooktop and how you cook. Higher CFM clears heat and smoke faster, and our CFM guide walks through sizing.
Do range hoods increase home value?
They can. A quality hood makes a kitchen feel updated and well equipped, which appeals to buyers, though the effect varies by market.
About FOTILE Range Hoods
Are you considering upgrading your kitchen’s range hood or adding one to your home? FOTILE has what you need. From quiet fans and energy-efficient models to touchless tech, our range hoods are designed to create a healthier, more stylish, and overall more pleasant cooking environment. Browse our range hood models to see which is right for your home.
FOTILE range hoods offer all the above benefits plus features built for capture and convenience. Capture Shield technology uses the Coanda effect, which keeps airflow clinging to the hood's surface, and the Venturi effect, which speeds air through a narrowing path, to pull hot, smoky and greasy air away from your cooktop. Touch-free gesture control turns the fan on with a wave of your hand, so you never touch a control with greasy fingers. Depending on the series, airflow tops out between 850 and 1,200 equivalent CFM across four fan speeds, and the quietest setting on the Pixie Air and Inclined Vent models is rated at 1.2 sones. FOTILE hoods use a filterless design with a removable oil filter, and on the Inclined Vent and Perimeter Vent series that filter is dishwasher-safe.
FOTILE’s stylish, powerful range hoods keep you and your family safe and healthy in the kitchen so meals together are always a pleasure.