This paper introduces two types of magnetization, and reports the effect of the magnetization direction on the iron loss in a brushless DC (BLDC) motor using a 2-D time-stepped voltage source finite-element method (FEM). The iron losses were found to consist of hysteresis and eddy current loss, which were calculated from the time variation of the magnetic field distribution. To confirm the analysis, a prototype BLDC motor was constructed with a sintered ferrite magnet. The analysis and experimental results suggest that the magnetization direction has a significant effect in terms of the iron loss characteristics of the BLDC motor.