Where is the best location to place a fan in my living room?

It should be in front of the window, facing inside (window open, obviously). This way it sucks in the fresh air and blows the natural breeze directly into your home, balancing out the temperature and probably giving you more oxygen.

Yes, what @Piper_Brianmind said was (according to this website) almost right (they speak of facing the fan out).
Untill i read this thing some weeks ago i would let it face in too, by the way.

@rebbel I’ve been told that, but I remain skeptic. Couldn’t hurt to try, though.

Skeptic is good.
I have the fan facing the bottom of my laptop now.
Fluther makes it hot.

If you’re just trying to move the air around, face it at you. If the outdoor air is hot, not a great idea to suck it into the room.
In the old days before AC, folks sometimes used fans combined with ice, similar to a swmap cooler.

@rebbel It’s not really Fluther that makes it hot, it’s the hot people on Fluther that makes your laptop hot. :)

Ah, did i forgot to mention that?

Where you place the fan depends on whether you have cooler air available.

If it is hotter outside than inside (so you can’t get cooler air from outside), you should place the fan so it blows on you, horizontally. You don’t want to blow the hotter air from the ceiling down, nor do you want to blow the cooler air near the floor up (because this will also pull the warmer air down).

If you have cooler air outside, put open one window on one side of the room for incoming cooler air, and open a second window for exhausting the warm interior air. Put the fan in the exhaust window pointing out. This may seem counter intuitive, but by blowing out you are assuring the hottest air is being pushed out. if you push in, the air in the room resists moving, the pushed air hits this resistance and some of the new, cooler air goes back out the window. When blowing out, there is no such resistance and all the hotter air goes out.

on the ceiling

If only one fan, then best to face it out and place high in window if possible as warmer air will settle toward the ceiling. Open another window in whichever room you wish to cool the quickest.