Bagua Map for Your Floor Plan
The Bagua grid divides a floor plan into nine areas: wealth, fame, love, family, health, creativity, knowledge, career and helpful people. You then work with those areas — clearing them, filling them with symbols of their element, moving the right rooms into them.
Two schools, two grids
The difference between the schools lies precisely in how the grid is placed over the plan.
Compass school. The areas are tied to the cardinal directions: north is career, southeast is wealth, southwest is love. You need a compass and the exact direction of north.
Front-door school, also called Western or BTB. No compass needed: the grid is laid so that the front door always falls in the bottom row. The wealth area is then the far left corner from the entrance, and the love area is the far right.
The schools give different answers, and that's normal: they start from different premises. The only real mistake is mixing them in one apartment.
The area names “wealth,” “fame” and “love” come from the popular feng shui of the second half of the 20th century. The classical schools are flying stars and the Eight Mansions, which is used to calculate the Kua number.
The areas and their elements
| Area | Compass school | Element | What goes there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wealth | SE | Wood | Plants, wooden objects, green |
| Fame | S | Fire | Lighting, diplomas, red |
| Love | SW | Earth | Objects in pairs, ceramics |
| Family | E | Wood | Photos, plants |
| Health | Center | Earth | Open space |
| Creativity and children | W | Metal | Metal, round shapes, white |
| Knowledge | NE | Earth | Books, a desk |
| Career | N | Water | Water, blue, black |
| Helpful people | NW | Metal | Metal, contacts, travel items |
How the calculator works
The calculator above maps out the plan for you.
- You picture the apartment drawn with the entrance at the bottom and divide it into nine equal parts, three by three. If the apartment isn't rectangular, mark which part is missing: in the tradition it's a weakened area.
- For the compass school, you stand in the doorway facing into the apartment and check on a compass which way you're facing — that's how the areas are tied to the cardinal directions. The front-door school needs no compass: the door is always in the bottom row.
- For each room, the room's element is checked against the element of the area. The kitchen is fire, the toilet and bathroom are water: fire in a water area or water in a fire area clash, and the calculator suggests a mediating element that reconciles them.
- Your Kua number is calculated from your date of birth, and your favorable and unfavorable directions under the Eight Mansions school are laid over the plan: where it's good to sleep and work, which way to point your head in bed and which way to face at your desk.
A bathroom in the wealth area is the most common complaint in this practice. The traditional answer is to keep the door closed and the area tidy, not to move the plumbing.
Frequently asked questions
What if my apartment is L-shaped?
Complete it to a rectangle. The missing corner is treated as a weakened area, and it's usually compensated for symbolically: with a mirror, light or a plant in the part that remains.
Should I map the whole apartment or a single room?
Either works: the grid is laid over the apartment as a whole and separately over individual rooms. The main thing is not to mix the conclusions.
Are the Bagua and the flying stars the same thing?
No. The Bagua marks out areas by purpose, while the stars are calculated from the year of construction and the facing direction. Practitioners use both maps together, but they lead to different conclusions.