FENG SHUI The importance of knowing your house facing direction

The facing direction of your house is not necessarily the same as the facing direction of your main door. This issue has led to a great deal of confusion amongst practitioners, especially those wanting to benefit from the more advanced formulas of feng shui. It is beneficial and most important to know how to identify the facing direction of your house, and then to know how to take that direction correctly and with a good compass.

In this issue, LILLIAN TOO discusses some key pointers to identifying the facing direction of your house.


In many houses, both the main front door as well as the house itself faces the same direction. If this is the case, then it is usually a lot easier to determine the facing direction, as it will then be quite obvious. But this may not necessarily always be the case. When the door and the house face the same direction, it offers greater potential for better feng shui. But when they do not, then in determining the house facing direction for purposes of using the feng shui compass formulas, you should take the direction that best represents the facing direction of the house rather than the facing direction of the main door. When there is a main door in front that also faces the same direction as the house, you can take the direction from this door.

If there is no main door that corresponds to the facing direction, you will have to take the direction from a window or from glass or sliding doors that correspond to the house facing direction. If on the other hand there is no door or window here, then what you may have identified as your house facing direction cannot be taken to be the facing direction. According to feng shui, there must be at least some kind of opening towards the direction that is the “facing direction” of the house.

To benefit from many of the compass formulas, it is necessary to determine the facing direction of the house correctly and accurately.

To ensure this, first take a good look at your house from all angles. Often the facing direction is obvious to the eye and professional feng shui consultants usually undertake an on-site investigation to correctly determine the facing direction of any building or house they are investigating.

There are general guidelines that will help you determine the facing direction of your house, although there will be houses that present a real challenge. Houses that are designed along modular lines or are irregular in shape often pose some difficulty when it comes to determining their facing direction. For most houses and apartment buildings however, the following guidelines usually apply and you can use them as a guide to help you make a judgement regarding the facing direction of your own house or apartment building.