Home and Garden Chat

In order to incorporate Feng Shui into you interior design you need to have a clear understanding of what Feng Shui is.   Feng shui is an ancient Chinese practice. It is the art of placing and arranging matter and space so that harmony with the environment is achieved. This harmony can refer to the harmony in the home, in relationships, in wealth and many other aspects in our lives. The practice has been around for several thousands of years and is still practiced in China and many parts of the world today teaching us how to create harmony and balance around us.

Feng Shui design cannot be of much help without looking inward. Doing a self-evaluation is the best place to start before trying to incorporate Feng Shui design. The self-evaluation is nothing more than taking a long, hard look at how you feel and how you live on a daily basis. Taking stock of your emotions, your relationships, your finances, and everything in your home that affects you throughout an ordinary day is crucial for trying out Feng Shui design changes.

Cleaning out the clutter and get rid of everything you do not love in your house. Clutter clearing is a time and energy consuming process that will feel like therapy, but it will help you lighten up the load metaphorically speaking.

Feng Shui is all about energy, and light is the strongest manifestation of energy. In fact, the light in your home  both natural and artificial lighting greatly influences the quality of your home’s energy. Smart lighting and good quality air are the very basics of good feng shui, and should always be on top of your feng shui priorities for any space. These two elements are essential for good feng shui energy in your home, called Chi. Open the windows often, introduce feng shui air-purifying plants or use an air-purifier. Allow as much natural light as possible into your home, and consider using full-spectrum lights.

Your body reacts to everything around you, and you either get nourished or drained by the energy that surrounds you. I strongly encourage you to become aware of the quality of light in your home or office and its influence on your health and well-being.  Light is our # 1 nutrient and has been called the medicine of the future. Make a habit of paying attention to how much good quality light you actually enjoy throughout the day, as well as the quality and number of the indoor light sources in your home. It is interesting to note that the use of cool white fluorescent lights has been legally banned in Germany at a Federal level. There are numerous studies on the negative effects of fluorescent lighting, as well as the benefits of full-spectrum lighting.

 Knowing that color is light, how many colors are you actually enjoying in your space? Yes, you might not want to create an absolute rainbow of colors in your home, but the truth is that many homes are starving for beautiful, pure colors, starving for more light energy. Think of the happiest humans out there, the little kids; their energy is constantly nourished by an abundance of colors.  Allow yourself to tap into a source of better energy, bring beauty into your home, bring more color, have good lighting. Educate yourself on how to light a home, and go for at least three sources of light in any room. Most young children are vibrant, creative, happy because they allow themselves to absorb different frequencies of light. Can you imagine a little child clinging to a beige decor scheme? It just can’t happen, as children are intuitively drawn to good energy.

Every Feng Shui design change that you make is important, even when the change is in a form of a furniture placement or positioning of other inanimate objects. As has already been discussed, elements have their own yin and yang energies. Wood represents life force and spirit—the wood grain rings indicate how many years that the tree has lived.  Since wood represents growth, too much wood in a home can cause the energy to become too vigorous, too aggressive. Feng Shui design uses all elements in moderation for creating the balance in a space as shown in the pictures.

Try to keep your Feng Shui design ideas focused on areas that deserve your utmost attention, and don’t spread your energy too thin. Instead of addressing five power spots or problem areas at once, for example, start by addressing one, then move on to the next.

The following Feng Shui design idea can help you to understand the concept of Feng Shui design in a clearer manner:
A long room or hallway is often incorporated into an architectural home design  and  is a problem area that Feng Shui seeks to deal with because a long, narrow hallway  or room carries Chi directly in a straight line. This allows Chi to gather force and become “rushing” or “raging” Chi. That’s not ideal. Aggressive energy can be harmful, leading to imbalances, and the room at the end of the hallway where the rushing Chi collects is probably suffering because of it. Having the bathroom at the end of the hall way is even worse. Since plumbing is symbolic of a house’s finances, losing Chi this way is literally “flushing money down the toilet”! This type of problem area can be fixed using Feng Shui design tips like keeping plants in the area as seen in the kitchen above, placing big pictures in the hall, or placement of the objects and furniture in accordance with the principles of Feng Shui elements. Enhancing the room or hallway in these ways can help the Chi to stay back in space rather than just rush in straight line.  A Feng Shui bathroom, on the other hand, can help you to have money flowing in.

Corners are another major problem area as they are often overlooked place in the home where Chi is incorrectly channeled or missing all together. With Feng Shui design though, you can prevent Chi from missing corners. A suitable object placed in the corner can attract beneficial energy–a plant perhaps. Lamps, such as a floor spotlight placed behind a palm plant, are excellent for this purpose. Using different Feng Shui design ideas one can transform a dark, dreary corner to a well-lit corner that is full of life and vitality. Shining a light up through a palm plant makes the light dance on the walls and ceiling making wonderful designs.

Study the elements Feng Shui theory to help you balance the feng shui five elements in your home, as well as strengthen specific elements in specific feng shui areas. For example, if you are working on attracting more prosperity, you will introduce the feng shui elements of Wood and Water in the Southeast area of your home.

Know Your Feng Shui birth element and create a home to support your personal feng shui element. For example, if your own element is Fire, you need to introduce the expressions of Fire, such as the Fire element colors(red, orange, purple, magenta, pink, yellow), and triangular shapes. You will also need a strong Wood element in your home, as Wood feeds the Fire in the relationship of five feng shui elements.

Always be mindful of the state of your home and how the energy in your home influences your well-being. Make a habit of paying close attention to the so-called feng shui “triangle” that is deeply connected to your health – your bedroom, your bathroom and your kitchen. Nothing is static in the world of energy, so be wise and keep your home healthy and happy.

After you have mastered the home feng shui steps, you can explore the deeper levels of feng shui, such as, for example, the flying star school of feng shui. Be sure to start with the basic steps, though, before applying complex feng shui formulas.

According to Feng Shui, power spots are unique to each person, family and home and some of these are determined not only by the things that are going on in your life right now but also by the design and architecture of your particular living space.

If you are planning to build a new house, you are in fact in a position to draw the maximum benefit from the Feng Shui design. You can consult a Feng Shui consultant who can offer you a number of Feng Shui design ideas that can be easily implemented in your home. The most ideal situation according to the Feng Shui design would be to define the power areas first and ask the architect to design the whole house around them. It would be in your best interests to apply Feng Shui tool ‘Bagua’ to have the best Feng Shui design in your house.

 By exploring Feng Shui design ideas, you can take the most beneficial and effective actions in every part of your house or the problem areas to encourage the optimal flow of Chi. While experimenting with the Feng Shui design ideas, as stated above,  instead of using the Feng Shui design in the whole house , it is best to target particular problem areas first and then move systematically from room to room as a means of improving Chi flow in all parts of your living space.

 

The key to making the Feng Shui design ideas work for you in your home lies in accurately honing in on your most important problem areas and taking care of them first. To help you determine which parts of your living space are most in need of your attention.  You can determine a problem area in your house by relating it to the problem you are facing presently in your day-to-day life. For example, if you are facing financial problems you can find out the areas that correspond to finance using the bagua and then use Feng Shui design to enhance the Chi flow in that area to bring about the desired change.

 The areas where you are likely to spend most of your time are the best power areas. These areas can reside in the center and then you can have the whole house designed around it. For instance, the bedrooms can be located in the area that corresponds to a section of bagua which represents love, marriage and health. Since it is important for you to have proper sleep for 8 hours to allow the body to rejuvenate and energize itself. Feng Shui bedroom design also provides you tips for deciding the direction of your bed. The home office can be situated in a direction that supports financial and career achievements. The entrances to the house can be designed in a way that they receive the Chi, or life force energy, from the most favorable directions for the building. As there are power areas in the house there can also be problem areas, that can affect your health, relationships and finances in a negative ways. Feng Shuialso provides guidelines for knowing these problem areas and provides Feng Shui design ideas for improving these.

 A power spot is an area of the home which can be as big as a room or as small as a tiny little nook, but this particular area has strong associations with your life (or parts of your life) that mean a great deal to you at a particular point in a given time frame. Feng Shui power spots are unique to each person, family and home. They are determined not only by the things that are going on in a person’s life presently but also by the design and architecture of their particular living space.