Feng Shui Living Room
A living room is used for a number of activities – as a family room where games are played, for relaxation and an entertainment room for playing music or watching television. Being one of the most flexible room in the house, sometimes living room is also used as a dining area or study room or office. Our living room is designated as a room of opportunity in feng shui. When visitors knock on the door, your living room should be one of the first rooms to welcome the guests.
The living room is the place of opportunity and potential. Therefore a clean, clutter-free, good quality light as well as good quality air are the minimum good feng shui basics for any living space.
How to Organize Your Living Room
- Living rooms are yin spaces filled with many comfortable, fabric-covered seats which are also yin. Placement of seating is perhaps much more important than the design of the seat itself. You should not place your chairs in such a way to have the back facing a window or doorway especially the sofa.
The sofa is considered the most important piece of furniture in our living room, therefore its position is critical in determining the movement of energy or chi. If the front door faces the windows of your living room, then avoid placing the sofa between the two, otherwise you will be sitting in a positionn that is in the line of fire as chi is said to enter from the front door and leave thruogh the window.
Avoid placing your sofa directly under an exposed beam in the ceiling.
In rooms where sofas and chairs are not backed by a wall, then you can create stability behind the seating such as placing a bookcase or table there. A circular seating arrangement promotes participation in conversation but will also create an abundance of casual conversation that may infringe on the formal atmosphere.
Interesting tip: If you have a visitor or guest who does more than their fair share of the talking, you can position them with their back to the door in order to reduce their dominance in the group. Uninvited guests who you would also like them to leave as soon as possible should be placed outside the main group.
Sofas and chairs with arms and high backs are protective and represent Tortoise, Tiger, Dragon formation offering good support to anyone who sit in them. And a footstool nearby marks the Phoenix position.
- Try to have furniture that has rounded edges (to prevent any poison arrows). If your bedroom leads off the main living area, then make sure that your furniture is not sending any “poison arrow” into the room from a corner. Try to keep all doors from the living room closed.
- In small rooms, try to keep your bookcases and wall-units low, othrwise the room can feel top heavy and closed-in. If you have fireplace in the living room, then placing a mirror above it will be highly recommended to prevent chi from escaping the room. Fireplace is an opening into the room and a mirror here will prevent energy or chi from escaping up the chimney.
- It is also important to be able to screen off office or study area so that work is not constantly preying on your mind when you are trying to relax. Ideally dining room and kitchen should also be separate from the main living room. But if your living space is all in one, then again you can screen them off in some way or grazing habits will be encouraged.
- Position your stereos as far away from the seating as posible to avoid electromagnetic radiation. Family photos could be displayed in this room. The images in your living room should be harmonious, pleasant and cheerful. Swords, guns, weapons and fierce animals (especially with its mouth wildly open and looks like it is hungry) have no place in a feng shui living room (or any room in your house). Lights are a wonderful cure for corners and dark areas of your living room.