Mirrors are one of the most essential items at home for both practicality and aesthetics.
How many can claim that they don’t look into the mirror before going out to work in the morning?
From a visual perspective, mirrors can often transcend a regular house to one that oozes luxury. Just walk into a condominium showroom and you will see what I mean.
So desirable they can be to homeowners that it’s not surprising to find them going overboard with the use of mirrors.
While mirrors can be very useful in feng shui, they can also can create unnecessary negative energy meandering around the house.
Here are some of the biggest mistakes you can make with mirror placement and installation.
1) Mirror behind seats
Whether it’s the sofa, dining chairs, or workstations, it is always good to have a solid backing where people are seated.
This is akin to having a “mountain” behind for support. Something that is one of the primary factors when we talk about a command position.
When mirrors are placed behind seats, even if it’s a solid cement wall, the mirror effectively removes any backing whatsoever. Inadvertently destabilizing the seating position.
A person sitting with his back against a mirror chatting with someone else seated opposite would effectively create the scenario of someone peeking at him from behind.
A recipe for back-stabbing tendencies.
Moreover, it’s not an ideal setup for the weekend poker games… unless you are the one doing the peeking.
2) Mirrors reflecting the bed
Whether a mirror is positioned beside the bed or in front of it, as long as the bed is placed directly in front of a mirror, it is a big no-no.
Other than for the practical purpose of not scaring yourself in the middle of the night by your own reflection, it has an even more serious spiritual implication.
For those that believe in metaphysics, the soul is said to leave the body and roam about when we go to sleep at night.
Mirrors can disorientate our souls, creating unnecessary problems in navigating back to the body.
Then there is the well-known ailment of mirrors creating third parties in relationships as they bring more “people” into the bedroom.
Infidelity can occur.
3) Mirrors reflecting doors
One of the commandments of interior form feng shui is to avoid doors directly facing other doors, especially in close proximity.
This creates the negative foundations for conflicts and arguments to occur in the house.
One don’t need to be a feng shui genius to realize that a mirror in front of a door would create a scenario of a door facing another door in the form of it’s reflection.
You might love your fresh-out-of-bed look when you emerge from out of the bedroom, but you can still admire that look in the washroom or the dresser.
Don’t install mirrors in front of doors.
The main front door entrance to the house should also not be greeted directly by a mirror when opened. It is one of the worst self-created main door afflictions.
This is because the main door is one of of the primary entry points of energy into the household premises.
Having a mirror reflecting an opened door is just showing energy entering the house a direct exit point.
4) Mirror reflects mirror
It might seem amusingly cool to see numerous reflections of yourself all over the walls, it might even let you experience the feeling of being in another world.
But having mirrors reflecting each other creates multiple “dimensions” in a house. It creates an eerie yin atmosphere at home.
You might like to experience that “Inception” moment once in the while. Just enter a mirror maze at a carnival to experience that. You don’t have to live in such a setup all of the time.
Mirrors facing each other are only suitable at home if you are into some kind of activities that requires it like a gym or dance studio in the house.
5) Mirror reflects stove
The kitchen is already an area of the house with a strong fire energy due to the presence of the stove.
Mirrors don’t just double up the fire energy emitting from a stove, it can also bring the stove into other areas of the house that might suffer badly with it.
For instance, if your home office has a large mirror that reflects the stove outside into view when you are working, you are burning up your wealth energy. No wonder your progress is not as ideal as you’d like!
Fire energy melts metal energy and burns up wood energy. It’s also a nuisance to water energy.
Just be mindful that mirrors reflecting the food on dining tables are positive placements, and they should not be confused with mirrors that reflect the stove.
6) Slanted placement
There are connotations with mirrors that are placed at weird angles.
An example of this happening is when a homeowner sets one up at a corner. Configuring a mirror orientation that faces diagonally across the room.
Sometimes odd layouts like trapezium shaped rooms are the main cause of these problems.
In addition to this, the Mandarin word for slanted is 斜 pronounced as xie. While mirror is written as 镜 pronounced as jin. When put together, 斜镜 is a homonyn for 邪进 which means evil come in.
When you look at this from a cultural perspective, I don’t think you need a second reason to avoid tilted mirror placements.
Default feng shui placements for mirrors
Despite what many think, there are no default places to locate mirrors for good feng shui in the house.
What’s most critically important for homeowners to take note is to consider what mirrors are reflecting in the house, and apply a little common sense.
Sometimes the beauty and open spaces mirrors bring into a house is just not worth the feng shui ailments they can create.
The feng shui considerations for the placement and orientation of mirrors in a residence is more about avoid the bad instead of seeking the good.
