Feng shui, explained plainly
Feng Shui Pack Editorial Team 
In the tradition, a back door lined up directly with the front door is described as a path that lets chi (qi) enter and leave a home too quickly, without circulating through it first. The concern isn’t the doors themselves — it’s the straight, uninterrupted line between them, which several schools treat as a design … Read more
Feng shui objects to a cluttered entrance because the front door is treated as the point where chi (qi), the flow of energy the tradition centres on, enters the home. Clutter piled there is said to block or slow that entry before it can move through the rest of the house. There is also a … Read more
An entryway should hold what a person needs on the way in or out — a place to sit or set down bags, closed storage for shoes and coats, enough light to see clearly — and it should stay clear of clutter, stacked shoes, umbrellas leaning in the open, and furniture that blocks or narrows … Read more
Feng shui traditions do not agree on this in one voice, but the most widely repeated version — from the Western Black Sect (BTB) adaptation — holds that a mirror directly facing the front door reflects incoming chi (qi) straight back out before it can circulate through the home. Classical Compass School texts are far … Read more
There is no single correct answer. Classical Compass School ties a front door’s ideal colour to which compass direction it faces, using the five elements. The BTB adaptation, more common in Western books, instead ties colour to which “life area” of the bagua map the door falls into. The two systems can give different answers … Read more
The “mouth of chi” (qi kou) is the traditional feng shui description of the front door as the main channel through which chi — the flow of energy the tradition describes moving through a space — enters a building. The door is treated less like a barrier and more like an intake valve, and its … Read more
A sloped ceiling is handled by moving the bed to where the ceiling is highest, keeping the head and body clear of the lowest, most acute angle, and treating the slope as a compression of space to be offset rather than a flaw to be hidden. No school of feng shui holds that a sloped … Read more
Form School feng shui generally treats a bedroom above a garage as a weak position, because the room sits over an empty, unsupported space rather than solid ground or living space below it. The tradition reads this as a lack of “support” for whoever sleeps there. It is not a rule found in classical Chinese … Read more
In Form School feng shui, a staircase running straight down toward the front door is considered a weak arrangement because incoming chi (qi) is thought to travel straight up or down the stairs and out the door before it can settle into the home. The concern is about the path, not the staircase itself — … Read more
A hallway is treated as a passage for chi (qi), not a room to fill. The general guidance across schools is to keep it clear, well lit and unobstructed, avoid sharp turns and dead ends where possible, and be deliberate about what doors and mirrors it connects — though the reasoning and the specific rules … Read more
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