Your home should be a place of relaxation, peace, and positivity. But life happens, and sometimes it can be hard to keep things in order. Luckily, the Chinese philosophy of feng shui provides a ton of helpful tips to maintain a positive, balanced living environment.
You might be familiar with feng shui in the home, but that’s actually a more recent development. Feng shui was used almost exclusively for city planning (i.e. outdoor spaces) since around 4000 B.C., until it came to be applied to interior design for the purpose of promoting a calm, organized environment. Here are 10 ways to use feng shui to turn your home into a peaceful, organized sanctuary that allows for an easy flow of positive energy that you’ll carry with you all day.
1. Keep your entryway clean and clear.
Where you enter and exit your home holds an essential energy that carries throughout your entire space. The best way to promote positive energy here is to remove clutter: Tuck away shoes and boots and keep coats, jackets, scarves, purses, and the like stored in a coat closet or on a coat hanger that doesn’t obstruct any pathways. As this area often extends to a front porch or outdoor walkway, be sure to find a removed place to store trash cans and recycling bins, as they act as energy sinks.
2. Always enter your home through the front door.
Garages and other side entrances tend to be more cluttered, poorly lit, and designed less for form and more for function. By this point in the process, you’ve already created a nice, clean entry door so make sure not to waste that hard work by using an alternate entrance.
3. Repaint your front door.
Speaking of your front door, one of the most prominent theories of feng shui involves the color of your front door. Depending on the direction your front door faces, the entryway to your home will correspond to one of the five principal elements in feng shui (earth, fire, wood, water, and metal). Each of these elements has certain compatible (positively energizing) and incompatible (negatively energizing) colors. The chart below will help you determine what color front door will promote a healthy flow of positive energy into your home.
| Facing Direction | Compatible Colors | Incompatible Colors |
| East | Green
Brown Other wood tones |
Black
Blue Purple |
| South | Yellow
Purple Orange Pink |
Green
Brown Other wood tones |
| West | White
Grey Metallic colors |
Yellow
Beige Other earthy colors |
| North | Black
Blue |
White
Grey Metallic colors |
4. Make your bed in the morning.
This might not be everyone’s favorite thing to do in the morning, especially before heading out to work, but it makes a big difference in the rest of your day. Making the bed in the morning allows for a smooth passage from the previous night into the new day, and having a well-made bed will inspire you to be more organized throughout the rest of your day. Plus, it only takes a minute (if that), so it’s by far the quickest process on this list.
5. Put away your laundry.
While it’s tempting to use your dryer as a dresser of sorts and avoid folding and putting away your laundry (not that we’ve ever done that), this is an important step in preparing you for the rest of the day. Being able to reach into a well-organized closet or dresser and find what you need in the morning doesn’t just make getting out the door easier—it eases your ability to manage the rest of the day’s disorder.
6. Keep the bathroom tidy.
Similar to making the bed, this is one relatively low effort (but has a big energetic effect). Putting towels on a towel hook or rack, storing toiletries under the sink or in a cabinet, and not letting the bathroom trash pile up will all allow for much better energy flow in your bathroom, which will be important for starting and ending your day.
7. Hide or disguise electronics and their wires.
Have a place where you can store unused laptops and tablets, so they’re out of the way and not disrupting the flow of energy in your home. For larger items like your television, try placing it inside an armoire or cabinet of some sort so that you can hide it away when you aren’t watching it. Similarly, be sure to use cable covers and power strip boxes to cover those unsightly wires and strips.
8. Be sure to keep your desk organized too.
It’s easy to let things pile up and get out of place on your desk, but having dedicated places for things like documents, papers, pens/pencils, tools, etc. will make for a more productive workday.
9. Allow some room for mess.
This might sound odd, given that we’re talking about getting organized—but sometimes things just get cluttered. Rather than let clutter get out of control, set aside dedicated spaces where messes can be contained. A basket for the things you take with you every day (like your keys, wallet, sunglasses, etc.) is a perfect example.
Keeping these ideas in mind, be sure to implement other elements of feng shui to make the process of tidying up that much easier. For instance, blue is associated with organization (especially richer shades like royal blue and navy), so try to implement these colors where possible (like the baskets you use to store toiletries and everyday items).
The north and the water element are associated with personal growth, so try a water feature like a small pond or fountain on the north side of your home, office, or yard. Finally, be sure to keep the center of rooms open, as this will allow for an easy flow of energy throughout the entirety of your home.
10. Landscaping
Once you’ve applied feng shui principles to the interior of your home, be sure to give the exterior the same treatment. Even if you spend the bulk of your time inside, your yard still plays a major role in the way positive energy moves in and out of your home. When it comes to landscaping and gardening, it’s definitely a quality-over-quantity game—so don’t worry if you don’t have a lot of space to work with. Here are the basics:
- The north is associated with your career, meaning you should be utilizing water features, as well as deep blues and blacks, in this part of your yard.
- Associated with spiritual growth and inner knowledge, the northeast is the perfect home for your garden.
- The east represents longevity and health, so keep this space green and healthy. This is the perfect spot for a long-living tree such as a hickory, oak, or cypress.
- The southeast is your money and abundance area, great for purples and gold. Stick with wood elements here but feel free to spice it up with some water features as well.
- The south is associated with fire, so it’s great for a grill or fire pit.
- The southwest correlates to love and relationships. Try to place some comfortable seating in this area, as well as pinks, reds, and yellows.
- West is for creativity, making it an excellent space to reserve for children.
- The northwest is home to new people and travel, meaning it should be an open space where you can greet people and let new and old friends alike get to know one another. It is associated with the metal element, so look to include grey hues.
