Knowing the directions and allocating them correctly in a building, a house or a lot is the starting point of any Feng Shui analysis. Thus, if you would want to apply some astrological formulas, you’ll need to be able to divide the floor plans of your dwelling into pieces of cakes or camembert, – depending on wether you are more the sugary or the savory type :p No, more seriously: there is also another method of demarcation using squares or rectangles that will be the subject of a separate article, very soon.
Back to our piece of cakes: in order to divide the floor plan of your home or office in equal parts, the first step will be to determine the Center of your home accurately. It is important to find it correctly, because it will become the reference point for any Qi distribution in your home or office.
How to proceed?
You shouldn’t have a problem to find the center of any location based on the 5 images below:
1. House of office with regular shape:
For regular shaped (square or rectangular) houses, the Center is located at the intersection between two diagonal lines drawn from the four corners of your home.
2. House or office with missing or weakened sector:
Your home has a missing sector or a weakened part? In the case where the missing part is quite small compared to the rest of the house (less than a third in length and width), visually represent the complete square or rectangle and find the Center, just as for image 1.
3. House or office with protuberant sector:
If you live in a house with a protruding or salient area (that is, a slightly larger area compared with other areas of the House), you must not take them into account to find the Center. Treat as for image 1.
The following two cases are somewhat more complicated to master. In doubt, call in a feng shui consultant who should be able to help you to determine the Center of your house.
4. House or office with irregular shape:
Some modern Feng Shui schools go even further (judge for yourself or check with your teacher/trainer/master if your school applies the following principles). For example, compare the following two images of the same dwelling first.
Both floor plans are identical, except for the way in which the blueprints were divided. Indeed, start by dividing the floor plan of your home into several separate rectangles. Then find the Center for each rectangle, as described for Image 1. Draw a line between the two central points 1 and 2. Repeat the same for the other possible demarcation and draw a line between the central points 3 and 4. The Center of the house must lie somewhere on the trail 1-2 and 3-4. By drawing two lines 1-2 and 3-4 on the same level, you’ll have an intersection between 1-2 and 3-4, which corresponds to the Center of your house.
There are more complex cases, as the images 5a and 5b below show.
Here, the Center is also on the line 1-2, but it will be harder to locate exactly. If the two rectangles have the same volume (meaning the different parts have the same size), you can determine the Center as explained for images 4a and 4b. But if one of the areas is larger than the other, the Center will be closer to the larger box. By drawing imaginary lines (as shown in image 5b), you can easily see to which rectangle the Center will tend to approach the most. Here the two lines drawn between the big imaginary rectangle clearly show that the Center will be closer to 2 than 1.
Once more, if your house or office belongs to these more complex examples, feel free to take advice from a feng shui consultant or the person who taught you feng shui.
In the next article (coming soon), we’ll show you how to superimpose Feng Shui templates onto your house or office floor plans. The templates will be very useful in order to know exactly where the annual afflictions, sha qi… are located.