Apartment Living and Feng Shui

Feng Shui and Apartment Living: Feng Shui Resources at Dragon Gate: "Feng Shui and Apartment Living
28 Jan 2003

People often ask whether or not apartments apply the same Feng Shui principles as houses. The answer is, yes. Another popular question is whether or not apartments automatically have bad Feng Shui. The answer to that is, no.

What makes apartments more challenging to enhance or correct than houses: There is no land or outside environment to remedy or control. Sometimes the most effective remedies for health and prosperity are things you do to the space just OUTSIDE your home. With an apartment, the focus has to be totally with the interiors.

There are some limits with apartment living when it comes to your neighbors. Sharing walls with people can subject you to sounds and smells that you would have an easier time separating yourself from in a house (although not necessarily!) Clients in houses have told me numerous upsetting stories about neighbor disputes from all sides.

Some ideal Feng Shui remedies involve structural changes. These too are usually limited or not allowed at all in apartment living. Sometimes it doesn t hurt to ask. When I was married and in our first apartment, we had a very dark entrance at the top of the stairs. My husband asked the landlord if he could install a skylight at our own expense and the landlord agreed. It was easy and cheap for my husband (the architect) to do, and the landlord knew it was an improvement to the property.

APARTMENTS ARE MORE DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND THAN HOUSES

The front and back of any structure has to be identified before complete analysis can be made. In Feng Shui, we call the front side "facing" and the back side "sitting." This is not always obvious. In fact, most of the time, an apartment FACES its window side. The brighter, more yang side of the apartment is often looked at as the face and windows the eyes looking out.

Apartments often have less than ideal entrances. They are usually dark (coming from the building s interior hallway). In small apartments, the kitchen is sometimes the first room you see when entering. It is generally better when the kitchen is not the first room you see because of a Pavlovian effect. It is also better when a kitchen has an exterior window.

Aside from some of the things just mentioned, apartments can have just as good or better Feng Shui than a house, depending on other compensating features. Is there a lucky floor you can choose in a multi-level building? Feng Shui numerology suggests picking a floor that matches your personal Trigram. (Based on your birth date) Since I value practicality over everything, my suggestion is to be as far away as possible from the garage entry gate or the building s trash dumpster! The top floor will have the best views and this can make the same size apartment feel bigger. This is one reason why they are more expensive.

MORE FENG SHUI MYTHS EXPOSED:

If you have heard that you should never put a fountain or an aquarium in the kitchen, this is incorrect. This misinterpretation of the elements is that the presence of water will extinguish the fire that a kitchen symbolically represents and somehow this will destroy your prosperity.

Sometimes the kitchen ends of being a good location of the house for water and it can benefit the whole house. Remember, any advice which says "always do this" or "never do that" is going to be general advice at best, and sometimes totally irrelevant to your unique space.

ANOTHER MYTH:

"When your fish die in your aquarium, it means that they absorbed something negative that would have happened to you." I doubt this! I think it means that you didn t take care of them properly.

AND ANOTHER MYTH:

"Don't keep books in your bedroom; they are too stimulating." This is another pseudo-FENG SHUI nonsense theory.

AND YET ANOTHER MYTH:

"Don't place your bed's headboard against a wall shared with a bathroom." This is another New-Age pseudo-FENG SHUI recommendation. Don't take seriously.

MYTH #345

"Don t have a skylight in your office as it provides a way for wealth to leak out of the room." Not true. Why would a skylight leak wealth any more than a window? Chi actually glides along all surfaces: floors, ceilings, and walls. Skylights can be great additions to spaces that would otherwise be too dark (yin). That in and of itself is counter-productive to creativity and prosperity. The preceding FENG SHUI myths came directly from a little book which was written by a well-known FENG SHUI practitioner in Southern California. It is a veritable gold mine of trash FENG SHUI and I am so grateful to the author for putting so much bad advice all in one organized book from A-Z. As I write my own book, which will expose all the fake FENG SHUI being perpetuated, I don t have to rack my brain to remember all the myths I have heard over the last ten years. This little book has helped me enormously in my research!



Karta Diamond

Kartar Diamond is a certified consultant and instructor from the American Feng Shui Institute. Her teaching schedule includes weekly classes in many parts of Southern California. Her consulting business, Feng Shui Solutions, specializes in existing residential and commercial property, as well as the design phase of new buildings and additions. Kartar's clients have included architects, designers, therapists, medical practitioners, artists, CEO's, entertainers, attorneys, restaurant owners, schools and photographers."

Great article! Really great article! I myself am stuck in an apartment and got great information from this article. I sure hope you do too.

Sam, Feng Shui Tips