Any sales person who does canvassing from door to door of residences would tell you that the best closing location at a prospect’s home is at the dining table.
With the high amount of deals agreed at this part of the house, real estate agents would undoubtedly second that.
In a family setting, while the living room is where members of the household spend the most time together, it is the dining room, specifically at the table where household members dine and enjoy family meals together. It’s where people open up and confide in each other about the feelings.
This table is therefore a critical element in the feng shui of a house.
Not that it is absolutely necessary to get right. But that it is absolutely necessary not to get wrong.
It must be said that the placement of the dining table also plays a crucial part in creating a conducive space for harmony at the dining area as a whole.
But the problem with many homes these days is that there are so much limitations with space (especially with apartments) that the location for the family-sized table is pretty much decided by default.
Sometimes the kitchen is the only possible space for it!
Let’s assume that you have already identified the best location to place the dining table and have kept a keen eye in avoiding all interior sha chi, then how do you choose one that would promote harmonious living among all family members under the same roof?
Best directions
When we talk about directions regarding this particular piece of furniture, we are usually not referring to the facing or sitting direction of the table itself.
After all, most dining tables don’t have an identifiable face to base our orientation of it with.
Directions therefore refer to the favorable directions of the individuals that the household consist of.
It is therefore important to determine the preferred sitting direction of each resident before buying the table for the dining area.
Why this is so is explained later.
In 8 mansions feng shui, each person is tagged with a kua number based on the gender and year that they are born.
With this kua number, 8 directions consisting of 4 favorable and unfavorable can be determined.
With this information extracted, it goes without saying that every member of the household should be sitting at the dinner table facing one of their personal favorable directions.
This would prevent people from being influenced by bad energy while at the dinner table.
Affliction can lead to moody behavior and potentially causing conflicts with others.
While preventing residents from sitting at a position facing an unfavorable direction might be enough to help them avoid bad luck, this often is not enough for feng shui geeks.
Because the dining table is a critical area that sets the tone of relationship between members of the household due to reasons explained earlier, harmony in the house can be sustained when each person is facing the Yen Nien (YN) direction which is one of the 4 favorable directions.
Some might argue that the Sheng Chi (SC) direction is known as the best direction.
In many aspects, it is. But that is mainly towards good fortune and wealth luck. Such an orientation might induce a person to talk about business and financial matter at the dining room table.
Converting family time to business time!
Ideally, a perfect table for the dinner area would be one that enables each person to sit down facing his or her YN direction when everybody in the family is at the table.
Once the YN direction is identified of each household member, you can now decide on the shape of the dining table.
Shape of dining table
If each family member has a different YN direction, then a round dining table could work best.
This allows each person to sit down facing his or her YN direction without looking odd or out of place.
This is especially so when there are more than 4 member at the table at dinner time.
For big families, I’ve actually witnessed meal tables shaped in an octagon resembling the bagua.
This enables each member to definitively sit facing a favorable direction without mistake!
When there are 4 or less residents, each with a different YN direction (for example north, south, east and west), then a square dining table can be an option.
Placing one in the dining room enables each person to face the individual YN direction to tap on that harmonious energy.
Should two persons have the same YN direction, then consider a rectangular table.
The longer side would be able to accommodate at least two people so that they face their best direction.
However, when you have doubts or want to have a little wiggle room in case you get things wrong, you can buy one of those dining tables where the rounded sides can be folded down to transform a round table into a square one and vice-versa.
This gives you a lot of flexibility to undertake changes in the dining room configuration when you deem it necessary.
Whatever you do, do not purchase a triangular table. That is just ridiculous.
A fire shaped table (triangle) would also make users more temperamental.
Because the shape of the table is determined by the number of household residents and their YN directions, the shape of the table might bring a conflicting elemental energy into the dining room.
In this case, the choice of colors can help to harmonize any predominant elemental conflict that might arise from the shape of the table.
Color of dining table
When we talk about shape, what might come to mind immediate is what elements each particular represent.
The 5 elements of feng shui can be represented by certain shapes:
- Wood – rectangle
- Fire – triangle
- Earth – square
- Metal – Circle
- Water – irregular
Depending on the nature of the elemental energy that resides in the dining room, the shape of the table can cause a war to break out between the energy base of the room and the table.
For example, let’s say the dining area is in the north sector of the house which is determined by you with flying star feng shui or trigrams to have a water energy base.
If you were to place a square table here, this would bring an “earth” table with a strong presence into a space of “water”.
As earth destroys water, this can create harmful energy to takeover this space. Not really the best setting you want to create for the dining area.
What you could do is to get the table in a “metal” color like white.
This would effectively harmonize the earth and water present as earth nurtures metal, and metal in turn produces water.
If you just don’t have a good feeling about white tables and prefer classic brown, then get the color you want anyway. But buy dishes and cutlery in white. This would put the harmonizing concept in play as well.
You would be able to get the furniture in your favorite color and keep clashes between the elements in check.
I can’t possibly list down all the possible elemental scenarios here.
To make this work, just take note of the elemental energy in the dining room, identify the energy of the furniture in question, and use a color that puts the conflicting elements (if any) in harmony.
All you need is a basic understanding of the elements. I promise.
Which dining table to get?
Since you will be getting the table in a shape with the YN directions of each resident in mind, and having it in a color that blends nicely with the residing element of the dining space, the material of the table is not that important.
This is because the color of the table would cover up the table anyway.
However, do remember to get one made with a solid material that is sturdy.
If you find a dinner table which is absolutely lovely and blends nicely into the interior design, only go for it after factoring the directions that each person will be facing.
Otherwise, the selection of a beautiful one can unknowingly become the source of disharmony in the family.
I will end this by mentioning that there are various other approaches in choosing a dining table to encourage family togetherness and harmony with regards to feng shui.
But this configuration setup have been observed to work best.
