When applying feng shui principles to an individual room in your property, like the living room, you have to consider the orientation of the room with respect to its surroundings. It’s also important to take into consideration the internal spatial instructions — or bagua — of the room itself, as defined by the positioning of the entry door. Combined with other factors, both of these directional relationships might help determine the best colors.
The Feng Shui Bagua
The bagua is based on arranging hexagrams in the “I Ching,” a historical book of Chinese wisdom, in an octagon. It may be represented as a square with nine identical divisions; the extra division represents personal well-being. To utilize the bagua, align it mentally with the floor plan of your room so that the entrance door falls in one of those squares in the bottom row. Going from left to right, the underside squares signify northeast, north and northwest. This makes the wall to the left of the doorway the east wall, the one on the right west, and the instructions on the other wall southeast, south and southwest.
The Facing Direction
Typically, a room faces the direction of its principal entry door, however, when your living room includes a huge picture window, it may make more sense to think about that the entrance. This is because the room faces in the direction where the majority of the chi, or energy, enters it. If the doorway is facing northwest, and it is on the ideal side of the wall, the room’s compass direction is directly in alignment with its internal bagua. If you consider the exact same room as facing in the direction of the window, you ought to earn a direction adjustment when considering optimum room colors.
Door Facing Northwest
The northwest is the most yang, or creative, of all the instructions, and it signifies helpful people and travel. Its component is metallic, and its color is white. If the doorway and room are confronting in this way, painting the walls white enhances all of the qualities that the northwest can bring into your life through that room. Earth improves metallic, so any ground colors, such as beige, terra-cotta or ochre can help temper the creative power of the northwest positioning. Metal feeds water, thus if the rest of the house comes with a water theme of blue or dark colors, you might even use these colors to advantage. Stay away from orange and red — the passion colors — and greens — the colors of timber.
Making Direction Adjustments
In case your northwest-facing door is in the middle of the wall — in the northern place concerning the room’s bagua — it is appropriate to add water colors — blue and black — in the room’s decor. If the door is on the left side of the wall, then on the other hand, use ground colors. Your door may be facing northwest, but enough chi may enter through a window to warrant considering that the facing direction. If so, think about both window and door instructions. Keep in mind that the flame colors of the south — orange and red — dominate metal, and steel, for its own part, dominates the greens of the east- and southeast-facing wood component; it is usually best to include the dominating color.