Bring Harmony and Peace to Your House With Outdoor Feng Shui

If you’re super into interior design, you’ve probably heard of Feng Shui and even tried applying feng shui Feng Shui principles in your house. Maybe you even already realize that it's also essential to your outdoor space. But in case you haven’t, don’t worry. 

We’ll break it down for you.

What is Feng Shui?

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese tradition. The practice revolves around harmonizing one’s surroundings through energy forces to bring positive energy into your life and to achieve maximum wealth, happiness, long life, and family.

The words mean “wind-water” but the traditional practice involves wind, fire, earth, water, and metal. Everything that is used inside and outside your house. Still, it’s not as easy as it sounds. 

At its core, it's about harmonizing with nature enough through colors, architecture, and design. A way to bring nature and the manmade together.

And according to Fend Shui principles, just as the right arrangments of those elements create balance and come together to bring around good things, the wrong flow can bring bad results. 

No worries, however! Practicing feng shui to bring positive energy to your place of residence is still not rocket science and in this article, you’ll come to know to apply Feng Shui principles to your house’s exterior to bring harmony, peace, and good luck to your house and family!

Bagua: Feng Shui Energy Map

Before getting into anything else, we first must delve into one of the most essential parts of feng shui: Bagua.

In Taoist cosmology, the Bagua is used to represent the eight fundamental aspects of reality. And for our purpose here, it has been reapproached as a map for residential places, where every cardinal direction in the trigram corresponds with an aspect of one's life.

In your house's interiors or outside space, those eight sections are usually fame, relationships, children or creativity, health, career, inner knowledge, family and/or ancestors, and wealth. With variations. And each of them corresponds to one of the feng shui elements.

Wealth, family, and health correspond to the wood element. Marriage and knowledge do the same with the earth element. As for children and travel, they correspond with the metal element.

Fire element gets fame. And the last of the five elements, the water element, corresponds with career.

And according to how you arrange that space, you can either promote harmony and attract positive energy or risk attracting negative energy. This is why the map is useful!

To apply feng shui, you have to consider the energy map. But how can you place the map in your outdoor space?

Bagua Up Your Garden

There are plenty of ways to incorporate feng shui principles throughout your garden. And we will get there soon enough. After all, what's a better place to work with nature than a garden?

But before you start planting anything or bringing about those extra decorations, the first thing to do to have a proper feng shui garden is to design your garden according to the Bagua.

De-clutter Your Garden

First things first, you have to de-clutter your outdoor space generally speaking, but especially your garden. Feng shui works according to the Qi- "energy current/flow" which means that easy flow is essential.

For good feng shui, everything needs to flow properly, and that can't happen with random things lying about.

Remove every needless thing from your garden. Prioritize easy movement inside and easy flow from one element to the other. Gently curving pathways that lead you from one spot to the other would be tremendously beneficial here.

Even if you're not spiritually inclined, an easy-flowing environment brings comfort and reduces anxiety.

Once you've decluttered, then position specific items, add landscaping elements, and plants by the compass of the map and the element it corresponds to out of the five elements, while also taking into consideration the element color theory.

North

That area of the map, as it should be in your garden, is all about your career and life path, symbolized by the colors blue, black, and other dark shades, and the water element.

Perfecting that area will help your environment contribute to a happy and successful life.

That means that north of your garden, that's where you should be accenting water features. If your garden starts north with your swimming pool then perfect, if not then another water feature will work out well.

Here you also have an opportunity to make a perfectly soothing zen garden by combining rock and water. A simple water feature or an ornamented bird bath will elegantly combine rock with water to assure good fortune while also being beautiful aesthetics.

North-East

The northeast part of the map symbolizes education and knowledge. It corresponds with earth elements and with beige colors.

There you'll want to accentuate those elements. To perfectly match the prosperity of knowledge, add a reading bench to that area. Just make sure it's not off-puttingly painted and is rather a subtle balance with the natural landscape around it.

With rock garden walls, it can even be your own private space inside your outdoor spaces to read and study amidst the calming and positive vibes, which will surely help you in your endeavors and spiritual growth!

East

Once you've perfected the north and northeast areas of your garden, it'll be time to move to the east part. On the Bagua map, the east is all about health and family, corresponding with wood elements and the colors green and brown.

So, that's the most perfect part for plants. Growth and good health are everything here. And you'd want to attract a healing energy.

That means avoiding dead or fake plants. That's the place for thriving, blooming, and living plants.

Make the space green, with ornamental trees. Weave those elements together but without clutter or overflow. Remember, good feng shui lies in balance and the easy flow from one element to the other.

South-East

South-east is also with the wood element and green color. It should be complimentary to your south part, especially as it symbolizes wealth and prosperity.

Low greenery would be perfect here. Maybe some wooden ornaments like toads and frogs would also be great here.

South

South is all about recognition, fame, and success. This is why, in both color and element, it's the most vibrant. It's the only part that corresponds with the fire element. And red is a dominating color.

A fire pit belongs here naturally. Warm-hue flowers around it will attract even more positive vibes while keeping the vibrancy that's condensed in this area.

South-West

Marriage and relationships dominate here. The southwest corresponds with the earth element and warm yellows. It's a space where love and peaceful relationships should prosper.

Make it an inviting and comfortable space. Perfect for a patio too, a space for energy nourishment just as well as love nourishment. You can plant put sunflowers there, too.

West

West should be the highest of your priorities if you have children. Descendants and children are what this part is all about, corresponding with the metal element and the white, silver, and gold colors.

Appropriately, you should make it a space where children can play and enjoy themselves and prosper in their outdoor surroundings.

Hang metal chimes/wind chimes there to attract positive energy. Wind chimes should be hollow because they can bring success and repulse negative energy! Then apply the right feng shui principles by also planting flowers that correspond with the colors.

North-West

The last remaining direction on the map. Northwest can be seen as a continuation of the west, where it corresponds to the same element and colors. But unlike the west direction, it symbolizes new beginnings, mentors, and networking.

Because of that, this part should be designed simplistically and minimally. This should be a social seating area. Imagine inviting new work partners to your house and seating them in this outdoor living space.

Hanging a couple of ornamental metal chimes should be enough, with the addition of some un-distracting flowers.

With that, you'd have satisfied the five elements in your garden. But there is something you shouldn't forget about!

Your House Exterior Colors

To finish applying the principles of feng shui in your outdoors, your house exterior paint ideally should match the five-element color theory.

Don't forget though, that the first of the principles of feng shui is flow, balance, and harmony. So the first thing to do while choosing paint is to do so by the house's surroundings.

After making sure there will be no clash, pick your exterior paint according to the map with its colors.

If you need any help designing your garden according to those principles, don't hesitate to contact us at Shrubhub.com

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