Any feng shui master would recommend square shaped houses with the exception of extraordinary circumstances.
But not every home owner would be able to act on that advise.
This could be because:
- They already live in an odd shaped house and relocation is not an option
- They have already bought a house and it’s too late to trash the closing
- They are tenants at a great convenient location and totally cannot move anytime soon
- They live in a house with sentimental value and will not relocate
- etc
The reasons can be endless. And they are justified in their own sense.
But what are the implications, pros and cons of different shapes of houses?
Square house
A square house is the most balanced in terms of feng shui and energy maps.
This is because interior natal charts such as those for 8 mansions and flying stars are imposed onto floor plans on a grid-like fashion.
In addition, a circle is symbolic of heaven and a square is that of earth.
These compounded reasons are why square houses are so cherished in the practice of feng shui.
There would be no missing sectors of the house, which can often be a serious feng shui affliction.
And if you are fortunate enough to have material input on how the house would be built, you would also be able to carefully plan for how each sector of the floor plan can be used without being restricted by missing corners.
Rectangular house
The rectangular house falls behind the square house in feng shui, but not by much.
It’s just that the individual sectors of the house might be stretched. Creating some problems with feng shui space planning.
For example, a long house with a short width can create such problems concerning sector proportions.
In extreme cases, it can even make it impossible to make any meaningful space segmentation for feng shui.
The gist here is the the width of such a property must be of considerable space. It has little to do with the ratio of length and breadth.
For example, if a rectangular house has a length-to-width ratio of 4:1, it can look like something totally fine on the surface. But when the width is just 6 meters, it would mean each of the 9 directional sectors would only have a width of 2 meters to work with. That’s hardly enough to fit a bedroom in.
However, do note that studio apartments and tiny homes might be fine.
U-shaped house
Even though a square house is so easy for an architect to design and usually an intuitive shape, the ambitions of building designers often go against the grain and make every effort to plan homes that are anything but square-shaped.
How else are you going to stand out as a creative architect otherwise?
But inevitably, anything other than square or rectangular houses are going to have missing corners.
Houses and apartments that are u-shaped for example, would face this problem. This is sometimes called the “Scorpion” by practitioners as the U shape resembles the tail of the insect.
Having a missing corner is not necessarily bad. For example, if the missing sector is where the Tui kua is, and there are no daughters in family, then the household would not face the full force of this feng shui predicament.
In addition, u-shaped homes can enable a homeowner to erect his own left dragon and right tiger for the house. Giving him full control in configuring the command position for the main spaces.
U-shaped homes can sometimes be very ideal as the center might be an open space which serves as a bright hall protected on both sides. Allowing Qi to be accumulated and tapped on by residents.
If you are lucky, your u-shaped home might only have one sector missing. That might not be a bad problem unless the missing sector is the northwest or southwest.
The same cannot be said of L-shaped homes.
L-shaped house
Apartments and houses that are L-shaped often have at least two missing sectors. In worse cases, up to four sectors can go missing.
That’s not a lot left for a homeowner to work with.
On top of that, the center can fall outside the house.
Unlike a u-shaped house where the center would be protected on both side by the property’s two “arms”, l-shaped property would mean that the chi at the center of the house would disperse. Leaving nothing for the house to draw on.
There’s no easy fix for these types of house shapes.
And the only real solution is to demarcate the house into two segments. Thereby, creating two separate spaces.
