How to feng shui your living room

If you follow the principles of feng shui, then you’ll know the environment you live in has a direct impact on your physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. By creating harmony and balance in your space, you can encourage positivity and relaxation in your life. While you may initially think of your bedroom or your kitchen first as functional areas of your home, you should definitely not overlook your living room!

Whether it's arranging furniture around a fireplace or ensuring your living room sofa doesn't face the entrance, here are our simple feng shui tips to make your living space work more efficiently and look good while you’re at it.

What is feng shui?

The ancient Chinese art of feng shui aims to balance the flow of energy throughout a space. According to feng shui, the placement and presentation of people's surroundings affect their feelings, so this influences where you position your furniture and belongings according to where you can get the best flow of positive energy, or chi.

The theory of yin/yang is also a big facet of how feng shui is applied to a space – that’s the balance of complementary forces, such as male and female or night and day. When applied to home design, bedrooms are considered yin because they have more of a feminine, restful, and calm feel, while living rooms are considered yang because they are much more active, bright, lively, and active spaces.

What are the feng shui living room rules?

When you create a feng shui living room, there are guidelines for the different aspects of your space that will help to bring more yin to your yang living room, such as the room layout and colours to use:

Feng shui living room layout

Try not to have any furniture facing away from windows – any landscape or beautiful view should always be featured, not obscured, so having your back to a window can interrupt the flow of positive chi that is channelled from the outdoors. Placing your sofas and chairs to face the windows will help to improve the collective energy of your living room. You can also invite conversation by having your sofas face each other, encouraging positive interactions.

Ensure your furniture faces the main point of entry

While you’re arranging your furniture, you should also ensure your seating faces the main point of entry to the room, whether that’s the front door or a doorway to another room. In feng shui, it’s thought that nervous energy is attached to not knowing what may be behind you, so by ensuring everyone has a clear line of sight to the entryway, you can eliminate that negative chi.

Declutter to improve the flow

Clutter is the enemy of positive chi – it blocks the energy trying to enter the room and holds up too much space in both your physical and mental space. Having meaningful décor that supports the intention or the reason for the space is all you really need.

What that means in real life is adding plants to encourage life energy, board games to encourage conversation and relationship growth, or books that encourage spiritual growth.

Bring in the five elements

The five elements, according to the Taoist system of feng shui, are earth, metal, water, wood, and fire. By bringing aspects of each of these elements into your home, you are bringing a good balance of wellbeing and natural health into your living room. So how can you introduce each of these elements?

Earth

Earth has muted and grounding tones, like browns, yellows, and oranges, so bringing colours such as beige, gold, and clay into your living room through your furniture, décor, or flooring helps to ground the space. Pottery and wooden décor elements are another great way to naturally bring this element into your space. For inspiration on how to incorporate these shades into your decor, have a read of our guide on choosing a living room colour scheme.

Metal

Metallic colours like silver and grey pair well with round and circular shapes to create that smooth and sleek effect of metal – this could be done with mirrors, curved picture frames or arched doorways or windows.

Water

Blue is the predominant colour we think of when we think of water, but other colours like silver and green also work well to bring aspects of this element in. Curved and naturally irregular shapes can work alongside reflective surfaces and fabrics to bring in the reflection element of water.

Wood

Wood represents life and growth, so bring in tall vertical lines and plenty of greenery and botanical patterns. Tall furniture like bookcases and lamps are worth looking for when searching for wood-inspired furnishings and decor. Natural materials are always important, so opt for wooden floorings like laminate or engineered wood - in fact, you can discover the best flooring for living rooms, with our handy guide!

Fire

Fire is the most abstract of the elements, so this can be open to a lot of interpretation, but generally, art that is edgier and modern works well, as well as colours and patterns that are strong, such as animal prints and leather.

Feng shui colours for your living room

A light, airy space is essential in feng shui, so not only do you need plenty of daylight to come in, but you want to use colours that won’t darken the room in other ways:

Use neutral colours – creams and whites on your walls are handy because you can change the look of your living room with the seasons to reflect the changing purpose of the space as the year goes on.
Don’t use black - black and darker shades are reserved for bedrooms and places for quiet reflection, whereas living rooms have more yang or lively energy, as we mentioned previously.
Introduce playful colours like blues and yellows, and calming influences like green and cream, to keep the positive chi flowing.

Feng shui your living room with Tapi

If you’d like to make the first steps towards creating a living room with strong positive chi, why not come down to your local Tapi store and speak with one of our floorologists about the different options available to you?

You can also book a free home appointment for us to come to you, where we can help you establish what flooring would work best in your space and to meet your feng shui requirements! Alternatively, find out more about how you can feng shui your bedroom, too.

Post author

Jeremy Garrish Buyer Jeremy has 35 years of carpet industry knowledge

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Published: 01-12-2022