How to Feng Shui Your Living Room
Photo by Jean van der Meulen on Pexels
For many people, the living room is a really important part of the home. It’s often used for entertaining and gathering with friends and family, which means there can be many different energies and personalities in one room.
Here are a few ways you can improve the feng shui of your living room:
Clear the space
The first thing we’d recommend is to clear your living room, both physically and energetically. Start by cleaning and decluttering your living room. If you feel like you have a lot of clutter in your home, be gentle on yourself! Clutter is a modern-day problem, and we haven’t evolved to work with it. A simple way to get started on decluttering is to let go of nine items each day for nine days. As you do, make a conscious effort not to fill the space immediately with new things!
We would also recommend an energetic space clearing. This is especially important after hosting guests in your home, or after you’ve been away for a little while. We love using oranges for space clearing, as they are an especially strong and vibrant fruit with an abundance of yang energy. You can make a mist out of fresh orange peels or orange essential oil, or you can work with a consultant to do a traditional orange peel blessing.
The best feng shui colors for a living room
Feng shui is not the same thing as interior design, but there are feng shui principles that can guide you towards choosing certain design elements for your space, including color.
One way to choose feng shui-inspired colors is to use the feng shui bagua. Pick an area of your life that you would like to focus on over the next three months, and find the corresponding bagua area. For example, if you’d like to work on new beginnings, look for the New Beginnings area of the bagua, called Zhen in Chinese. The color associated with this area is green, so you can add green to your living room with the intention that the energy of new beginnings will resonate throughout the room. You can also lay the bagua on your living room and add green in the New Beginnings area.
Another way to approach color and feng shui is to work with the five elements. Each element is connected to certain types of energy, so you may want to choose an element to work with that corresponds to your intentions of how you would like to shift your life. Then, incorporate the colors associated with that element into your living room decor.
Here are the qualities and colors connected to each of the five elements:
- Earth element for stability and grounding: yellow or brown
- Metal element for joy and communication: white or metallic colors
- Water element for wisdom and social connections: black or charcoal
- Wood element for growth and healing: green or blue
- Fire element for inspiration and passion: red or fiery oranges
Pay attention also to what colors you are intuitively drawn to, since that is often a good indication that a color could be supportive for you!
Make space with your furniture.
When you’re setting up your living room, you’ll want to make sure there is space for the friends and family you’d like to host! Is there space to connect and have a conversation, or play a board game? It’s best to avoid having too much furniture or items that are too large for the space, as a cramped room can cause qi to stagnate.
Also, try not to block doors or windows with furniture — this can represent blocked opportunities or energy. Your doors represent your mouth and your windows represent your eyes, so it’s a good idea to keep the areas in front of them clear. If you can, try to move your furniture out of the way so that the doors and windows can open fully, or get smaller furniture that fits in your space more comfortably. If this isn’t possible, you can at least move your furniture a few inches away from the door or window behind it to allow the qi to breathe
Note: One exception to this guideline is if you have floor-to-ceiling glass. In this case, adding a piece of furniture in front of the glass can help create more stability.
Harmonize with round shapes
Round shapes help to smooth and soften the qi in the room, which can be quite helpful in an area where people tend to gather. This could be a round table, a round rug, or even a round mirror. If you do decide to add a mirror, this can also open the space up and expand it energetically.
Add plants
Plants represent the wood element, which brings kindness, flexibility, compassion, and growth. Houseplants not only soften a space, they also bring more nature into your home and help to cultivate these wood element qualities in your life.
We hope this inspires you to make some supportive shifts in your living room! As always, this isn’t a checklist to complete, but rather a resource for inspiration. Pick one thing that resonates with you, and take it from there.