If you want to make sure you can keep your home cool during even the hottest days of summer, and you're ready to install a new air conditioner, you'll probably be trying to decide whether you should go for a single wall-mounted unit in one room of the property or a central air system that produces cool air throughout your home using a system of air ducts.

Wall-mounted units can be fine for some homes, particularly small apartment buildings, but you're apt to find that central air systems make the more advantageous choice most of the time. Here are just a few reasons why.

More Even Cooling

One of the major problems with a wall-mounted air conditioning unit is that they can only cool one area of your home. That room might be kept comfortably cool, but the heat in the rest of the home could be unpleasant and the cooling system will constantly need to compensate for the encroaching heat.

If you only have air conditioning in one room of the house, you'll probably find that your energy costs increase because the unit will have to cool both that one room and the warm air that enters from other parts of the property. At the end of the day, this isn't a very efficient practice.

Helps Prevent Allergy Flare-ups

Wall-mounted air conditioning units do contain individual air filters of their own, but these aren't as good at improving overall air quality throughout your home. Firstly, their filters tend to be less technically proficient at removing allergens such as dust, pollen and animal dander. More importantly, they will only tend to improve the quality of air in one room.

In contrast, central cooling systems come with sophisticated filtering systems. They'll also pull a huge amount of the air in your home through their ducts, so you'll find yourself less affected by allergens no matter where you are in the property.

Unobtrusive

It might sound like adding a central air conditioning system to your home would take up too much space or look a little unsightly; after all, these systems are much larger than a single wall-mounted unit.

What you need to keep in mind is that the bulk of a central cooling system will be housed in one place, usually on the roof or at ground level, so the main part of the system can be placed somewhere where you'll scarcely have to see it. They don't take up wall space, and the only sign you'll see in each room are the ducts leading into it. Additionally, central air systems are perceived as less noisy than wall-mounted units since their main operations don't take place directly in your living space.