Feng Shui Room Planning — Frequently Asked Questions

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Rounded, broad-leafed plants are the most commonly recommended type in Form School material, generally placed in the room's entry path or a corner that otherwise feels dead. Cacti and sharp, spiky plants are the most commonly cautioned-against type, particularly near seating. The plants guide covers which plants and where, room by room.

The same commanding-position logic as a bed: facing the door, or at least able to see it without being in a direct line with it, is the most consistently cited desk placement. A desk with its back to the door is the single most common complaint this site's inbox gets, and usually the easiest fix.

It's a traditional caution — the concern, as usually described, is that energy entering the door moves straight up or down and out of the main living space too quickly. It's a contested point rather than an established one, and where the layout can't be changed, a rug or a piece of furniture that slows the sightline is the commonly suggested adjustment rather than moving stairs.

It's a grid, either fixed to the compass or fixed to the front door depending on the school, that assigns each area of a floor plan to a life theme — wealth, health, relationships and so on. It's a traditional tool for thinking about a space with intention, not a measuring instrument, and this site does not claim that improving a Bagua area produces the theme it's named for.

It's a commonly cited concern, generally framed as energy moving too directly between the two rooms rather than settling in either one. The fixes people cite most are a rug, a piece of furniture, or a plant placed to soften the direct sightline — all low-cost and reversible if you're not convinced.

No. The planner and every guide on this site work with furniture you already own — the changes are almost entirely about where things sit, not what you buy. Anything in the resources section is optional and clearly marked.