13 Mistakes Everyone Makes When Using Their Range Hood

Your range hood is the unsung hero of your kitchen. They may not be glamorous or flashy, but range hoods perform a vital function when you're cooking food, namely pulling air containing smoke, grease, and humidity out of the atmosphere above and around your pan. The hood then either filters the air, removing the impurities, before returning it into your kitchen, or it kicks the air out of your home entirely through a system of ducts. Doing this serves several vital functions: Not only does it make your kitchen's air nicer to breathe, smell better, and improve its overall quality, but it also helps to prevent moisture and grease buildup.

Sounds simple, right? Unfortunately not. Range hoods may seem as easy to use as flipping on a switch, but simple errors like turning them on too late can make them largely ineffective. Failing to maintain them properly can also cause range hoods to become useless over time, and forgetting about some key features can make your cooking and cleaning experiences much trickier. Let's get under the hood of these appliances so that you're using them to their full potential.

For some people, the range hood is a piece of equipment that only gets fired up when they're searing or charring certain foods. However, sucking up smoke is not the only thing they're good for. While smoke is of course the most visible substance that gets handled by range hoods, they also deal with food odors, grease, and water vapor released by your food.

Remember that smoke isn't the only thing that can cause irritation to you or damage to your kitchen. Water vapor can lead to a buildup in humidity, which can degrade your fixtures and furnishings, ruin your paintwork or brickwork, and contribute to mold growth. Grease, meanwhile, can build up invisibly on your cupboards and cooking surfaces, giving them nasty smells and making them a nightmare to clean. Food odors can also get into soft furnishings around your house and fabric-based items like kitchen curtains and ruin your home's ambiance. A good rule of thumb, therefore, is to use your range hood every time you're cooking food, even if you're doing something as simple as boiling an egg or a pot of pasta.

If your kitchen has windows, you shouldn't just be relying on your range hood to filter out smoke and grease. Opening your windows can give these pollutants somewhere else to go and helps significantly to clear your kitchen of bad smells. This is doubly important to do if your range hood isn't linked up to an external duct. "If you have a range hood that just recirculates air back into the kitchen, you need to use another exhaust fan — for example, from a nearby bathroom — or open windows," air quality investigator and scientist Brett Singer tells Stanford University. Doing this can improve the overall air quality of your kitchen and your home.

If you have windows in two different locations in your kitchen, opening them both can create a through-breeze that can whip moisture, smoke, and smells away. If you don't, try opening a window elsewhere in your home, as well as in your kitchen. While it can be tricky to remove moisture if you don't have windows in your kitchen, using a portable dehumidifier in tandem with your range hood can help considerably. By far the most useful tool in your arsenal is your range hood, though, so make sure you're switching it on. ‌

There's something comforting about flicking a range hood to its top setting and hearing the roar of the fan, safe in the knowledge that all your smoke and moisture will be removed from your kitchen. However, it's rarely a wise thing to do. Your range hood's maximum speed should only really be used for intense cooking with brief high heat or large amounts of smoke. Most of the time, a lower setting should be entirely sufficient to get rid of air pollutants.

This is particularly true if you're cooking for long periods: Picking the highest speed will just overwork the fan. This will, inevitably, lead to you having a higher energy bill. Using the top setting excessively will also leave you at more risk of deteriorating your appliance and shortening its lifespan, or leading to you having to get replacement parts quicker than you'd anticipated. Remember, too, that opening your kitchen windows will help your range hood out to no end, removing moisture and food smells and bringing some wonderful fresh air into your home — for free.

Prioritizing the front burners on your cooktop makes perfect sense. After all, they're the closest ones to you, and why would you reach for the back if you didn't have to? Well, because your kitchen's air quality will thank you for it. Your back burners are far more covered by your range hood when compared to your front burners, from which smoke and grease can escape into your kitchen more readily. "The airborne compounds and chemicals tend to rise up in a column over the pan or pot you're using and so you can imagine, that if it's completely covered by the vent sucking out the air, you're capturing a lot more of the airborne pollutants," notes "The Great Outdoors" author and science journalist Emily Anthes to The Kitchn.

Anthes' claims are backed up by a study on the very subject published in Environmental Science & Technology. Researchers found that when the back burners were used, range hoods were way more efficient at capturing pollutants. This not only means that cooking on the front burners releases more pollutants into the air, but it also means that you're not using your range hood to its full potential and possibly just wasting electricity. That's not to say you shouldn't use your front burners at all, of course. Just try to keep a window open while doing so.

If your filters are unclean or blocked, it's pretty much pointless turning your range hood on. The filters, as their name suggests, sift out any contaminants in your kitchen's air and work to remove grease, smoke, and moisture from your atmosphere. However, because they spend all their time combating pollutants, they can get clogged up or deteriorate quite quickly, rendering them useless.

The first step to maintaining your filters is identifying what type you have. Filters are generally made from metal or charcoal, with metal filters coming on ducted models and charcoal ones fitted on ductless range hoods. If you have a metal filter, it's best to clean it monthly to remove any built-up grime and replace it if it becomes inoperable or damaged. Charcoal filters, on the other hand, should be fully replaced every six months or so, as they lose their efficacy over time.

Some filters are also fitted over grease trays, which collect filtered-out grease and which need to be cleaned or replaced periodically. As all range hood designs are slightly different, it's best to refer to your manufacturer's instructions to ensure that you're performing these procedures safely.

That light embedded in your range hood is way more useful than you think — yet a lot of people fail to use it at all and rely on the lighting in their kitchen while they're cooking. Do this, though, and you're more likely to ruin your food. Your range hood lamps illuminate your food with greater intensity than your overhead lights, and this lets you see when items you're sautéing or frying have developed the right color. It also lets you see where any splatter or mess has gone while you're cooking, letting you clean it up easily before it sets in.

There's also an aesthetic purpose to your range hood lamps, and they can offer another source of light in your kitchen without you having to rely on harsh overhead bulbs the whole time. Make sure you're keeping your range hood lights clean, wiping them down to remove any grime or dust frequently. Bulbs should be replaced roughly every 6 to 12 months, but you might find you need to swap them out sooner if you're using cheaper bulbs. Range hood lights are also prone to blowing from becoming overheated, so keeping your kitchen ventilated to remove excess heat while cooking is always a good idea.