The combined star-delta winding has been attracting the attention of industry because of its potential to improve the efficiency of electrical machines. In order to show the efficiency benefits of this type of winding, many authors have used methods to determine the improvements in winding factors, published in different papers, which have not been validated yet. Some of these methods contradict each other. Furthermore, as a demerit of this winding, a unidirectional rotation has been reported. In this paper, a set of new formulas to calculate the winding factors for combined star-delta windings is proposed. In order to check the validity of the proposed formulas, a 2-D FEM and experimental tests on a salient pole synchronous machine are presented, which allows different combined star-delta winding connections. In contrast to other publications, the measurements show that combined windings can be applied for both directions of rotation without any problems.