Pretty much all of the decorative ceiling fans you see in the big stores have the on/off/speed chains dangling from the centre.

I have one of the cheapest fans at home the pressed metal 3 blade which has no pull cords but we have a nice 3 speed rotary controller on the wall.

I have also seen a fan controller in my Schneider catalogue which is basically a small dimmer switch,(or appears to be)

What I want to know is, do I just need to have a typical rocker switch in a faceplate to send power to the fan and then have to manually keep pulling the strings OR can I use a dimmer switch controller and cut off the chains which are unsightly and possibly hazardous?

No problem putting a switch on the wall to turn the fan on and off. All ours have the supplied speed controllers kept out of sight with additional on-off switches with the light switches.

I tried the dimmer-like speed controllers but they make the fans buzz annoyingly (or the combinations of fan / controller I tried did).

We also have two fans which came with remote control, these work well, no buzzing and on/off /speed control from your armchair

You can add remote control to any fan. Remote is the transmitter, receiver is wired in and hidden in the top "cone" of the fan.

Good info thanks guys.

Like the remote option but dont want to spend more than 2k per fan....cost per fan.

The buzzing/flickering using a dimmer i would guess is the fan/light using much much less power than than the dimmer wants to work with.

From your reply Crossy i take it most fans are supplied with their own 1/2/3 speed controller?