Plan your room, not a generic one
Enter your room's real dimensions, door position and use, and get a layout with the reasoning behind it — which part is tradition and which part is just good ergonomics. Feng shui does not promise wealth, health or love; it offers a way to arrange a space with intention.
Which room, and what's actually wrong with it?
Pick the room you're actually working on
Six starting points, sorted by the room and problem people bring us most.
Try the planner before you read another article
Enter your room's real length, width, door facing and clutter level, and get a layout with the reasoning attached — not just a list of rules to apply yourself.
Room layout planner
Enter your room's real dimensions, door facing, purpose and clutter level and get a suggested layout with the reasoning labelled — tradition separated from ergonomics.
Assumptions this uses
- Commanding-position guidance (clear view of the door, not directly in line with it) is weighted more heavily than compass direction for the room purposes tested here
- Compass facing is used only to note where Compass School guidance would differ, not to override the Form School layout suggestion
- A clutter rating above 6 out of 10 is flagged as the higher-impact change to make before any furniture move
- Room dimensions under roughly 2.5 metres on the shorter side are treated as a small-space layout and given zone-based suggestions instead of standard placement rules
- The tool does not know your furniture's actual size, so suggested positions are zones to test, not exact coordinates
Limitations: This cannot tell you whether a layout will improve your finances, health or relationships — no feng shui tool can honestly claim that. It also can't see your actual furniture, wiring, or pipework, so treat the output as a starting position to test in the room, not a final answer.
Runs entirely in your browser.
The fastest change in any room: clear the path to the door
Before touching furniture placement, walk the room and clear anything blocking a direct path from the main seating or sleeping spot to the door. This is the one recommendation that shows up in Form School, Compass School, and plain ergonomics alike, and it takes minutes, not a redesign.
Ask about your specific room
A focused assistant for room-layout questions — it won't do a full reading, but it will reason through a specific placement problem with you.
Ask about your room
If your room doesn't fit neatly into any of the guides, tell us the shape of the problem — we read every message.
There's no such thing as a room too odd or too small to ask about.
Partner link — we may be paid a fee at no cost to you, and it changes nothing about what we recommend. Details.
Furniture that actually fits the layout you just planned
Once you know where the bed, desk or sofa should sit, the next problem is usually finding a piece the right size — this is where a furniture search helps more than another feng shui article.
Search furniture →What the guides keep pointing back to
Four things that come up constantly across the room guides — a search term to use, not a ranked 'best of' list.
Some links in this section are partner or affiliate links, and we may be paid a fee at no cost to you. It never changes what we recommend or the order anything appears in. Full disclosure · how we source this.
The Room Harmony Workbook
A printable workbook that walks through measuring, orienting and placing furniture for eight room types, with the tradition and the ergonomics kept on separate lines throughout.
Where this site earns something
Two things, both clearly marked: a furniture retailer link when a guide points at a real placement problem, and the Amazon panel below for books and measuring tools.
Some links in this section are partner or affiliate links, and we may be paid a fee at no cost to you. It never changes what we recommend or the order anything appears in. Full disclosure · how we source this.
Wayfair
A furniture retailer — useful once a guide tells you what shape or size a piece needs to be, not before
Search furniture →Feng Shui Room Planning — Frequently Asked Questions
Where the answer genuinely depends on which school you follow, we say what it depends on rather than picking a side quietly.
Which way should my bed face for feng shui?
There's no single answer both schools agree on. Form School generally cares more about the bed being in the commanding position — able to see the door without being directly in line with it or against the same wall as it — than about compass direction. Compass School (Bazhai) instead calculates a favourable direction from your kua number and the home's facing direction. If you only do one, most sources agree the commanding position matters more for a bedroom.
Is it bad feng shui to have a mirror facing the bed?
This is one of the most repeated cautions in Form School material — the concern is usually described as disrupting sleep — though it's also one of the more contested points, and some contemporary practitioners treat it as folklore rather than a settled rule. If it bothers you, moving the mirror or covering it at night costs nothing and resolves the disagreement either way.
What is the commanding position in feng shui?
It's the placement, cited consistently across Form School sources, of a bed, desk or sofa so the person using it can see the room's entrance without being directly in its path — diagonally across from the door is the most commonly cited version. It's also just good ergonomics: fewer people are startled by someone entering behind them.
Can I do feng shui in a rented apartment where I can't move walls or doors?
Yes — nearly everything on this site is furniture and object placement, not structural change. The small-apartment guide is built specifically around what's possible with a couch, a bed frame, a rug and a mirror, not a renovation.
Does feng shui actually work?
That depends what you mean by 'work'. There's no established scientific evidence that furniture arrangement changes wealth, health or relationships, and this site never claims it does. What's better supported is that some feng shui guidance overlaps with plain ergonomics and clutter reduction, which do affect how a room feels to live in — that overlap is what the tradition-vs-ergonomics labelling on every guide is trying to make honest.
What's the difference between Form School and Compass School feng shui?
Form School reads the shape of a space — sightlines, doors, commanding positions — and is largely direction-independent. Compass School (Bazhai) calculates favourable and unfavourable directions from your birth data and the building's facing direction using a luopan compass. They can and do recommend different things for the same room, which is why this site names which one it's using in each guide rather than blending them.