Feng shui tips and principles offer an excellent framework to guide you in creating a serene home. You can use these guidelines to make some of those difficult interior design choices of color, furniture, accessories and furniture placement for your home easier.
Clutter Free Equals Serenity
Keeping a clutter free home may be old news, but it's vital to maintaining a serene environment. Clutter creates stagnant chi energy and prevents life vitality from nurturing your home. Establish a few simple house rules that will ensure your initial feng shui efforts are ongoing. Use a declutter checklist to keep your home free of clutter that harms chi.
Use Colors and Elements in All Rooms
Select the color and element for each room based on compass direction. Each compass direction has several assigned colors and one element. Incorporate these into any room design. The one exception is the use of the water element in bedrooms. Never place water in a bedroom. Since colors don't activate elements, but are merely symbolic, you can feel free to use blue and black in the North sector.
Make Your Master Bedroom a Retreat
The master bedroom should be a retreat. Start by using the bedroom colors assigned to each compass direction. To boost the chi energy, add some of the appropriate elements for the compass direction. For example, an east or southeast bedroom will benefit by adding wood elements, such as a wood headboard and other furniture and objects. When using elements, don't overpower the room by adding too much of the element. The key to a successful feng shui design for this and other rooms is to create a balanced design.
Pay Attention to Kitchen Location and Layout
This is a yang room and not always a serene setting since it's filled with fire (yang) and activity (yang). The way you can incorporate the kitchen into an overall serene home is through organization and layout. If you're in the planning stages of building a new home, then you can use the kua number for the breadwinner to locate the kitchen in a suitable direction.
Feng Shui Your Living Room
The living room is the gathering place for the family to spend time together relaxing. There are a few things you can do to achieve this goal. Furniture placement plays a major role in the success of a feng shui layout for this room.
- Never place furniture in natural pathways between doors.
- Place sofa against a solid wall.
- Allow enough space between furniture for chi energy to move through the room.
Make Your Dining Room the Center of Your Home
This room is vital to the wealth and abundance of the family. There are few things you can easily add to this room to make it flow with the rest of your house design to ensure a sense of comfort and calmness.
Feng shui guru Lillian Too suggests the best location for a dining room is in the center of the home or as close to it as you can get. When you follow feng shui rules, they add to overall peaceful feeling of home ambiance. Other tips include:
- Place a wall mirror so it reflects the table (and food) to double your fortune and provide a feeling of satisfaction and abundance.
- Don't dine near the front door this sets up an uneasy feeling and will cause your fortune will slowly slip away, creating stress.
- Dining room and kitchen should be on the same level, never with the dining room below the kitchen level.
- Create a lush garden or vignette outside the dining room window to offer a tranquil view. If located in the southeast or north, place a water feature in the garden. Just make sure the water flows toward the house.
The feeling of not having enough space to dine creates a feeling of restlessness. If your home doesn't have a separate space for eating, then designate one in your home, either in the kitchen or living room. This can be done with a space-saving drop leaf table that you open up for meals.
Give Bathrooms Positive Energy
Lessen the negative energy of bathrooms, which can disrupt the serene energy you want to achieve. In feng shui, the energy found in a bathroom is considered inauspicious since this is a room that carries waste and dirty water from the house.
Create the Ideal Home Office Work Environment
The home office is an important room for a feng shui home design. You can create a restive work environment with a few feng shui additions and the ideal office layout. When designing this space, it's helpful to think of it the same way you would a business office.
Pay Attention to the Front Entrance and Exterior of House
The outside of your home is far more important that the interior when it comes to feng shui. Some of the enhancements you can do are easy and don't cost much, mostly sweat equity. You want the exterior of your home to have stunning curb appeal. This aesthetic has an immediate peaceful effect and invites you to enjoy the beauty and serenity that only nature can provide. Some of these things include:
- Create a small private garden space in your outside space just for meditation and relaxation.
- Keep outside entrance clutter free.
- Sweep walkways regularly.
- Maintain and manicure yard and shrubbery.
- Don't leave tools out.
- Spruce up paint when needed.
- Clean out gutters.
- Replace burned out lightbulbs in outdoor lighting fixture.
Add Objects That Imbue Serenity
There are many objects that you can add to various rooms in your home to help imbue peace and harmony while ensuring abundance to your family. These are also used as feng shui cures or remedies for afflicted areas. If an area is afflicted, it will disrupt any feeling of comfort, peace and serenity.
- A small desktop water fountain or aquarium should be placed in north or southeast sector of home (unless it's the bedroom). This sound will help to sooth away the stresses of the day.
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Fu dogs will guard your home against burglars and loss and imbue a feeling of protection and safety.
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Lucky bamboo helps to re-energize your home, but also instills the restive aspect of nature inside your home. Place in east or southeast of home or home office.
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The crane is an ancient symbol of harmony. Use a pair in the bedroom or den to establish the calming energy this symbol brings.
Balance Equals Serenity
Feng shui principles are based on the philosophy of balanced yin and yang energies. When you create a balance interior design using these guidelines, a rhythm of harmony is set in motion that in turn creates a serene feeling within your home.
