A good feng shui home starts at your front door. Not in the living room, not in the main entry, and not even in the kitchen (where so many people focus their attention when selling or renovating a house). Why is the front door so important? Because it is through the front door – also called the mouth of Chi – that the house absorbs most of the energy it needs in order to nourish your personal energy.
If you are interested in exploring feng shui, you know that you can choose from a variety of tips for any room in your house in order to achieve good feng shui. However, none of them – with the exception of your bedroom – is as important as a good feng shui front door.
Create a Strong Feng Shui Front Door in Order to Attract Good Chi
The basic way to create a strong feng shui front door is with the harmonious feng shui design; this includes colors, specific shapes, images, and materials. The best feng shui design is the one that nourishes the feng shui element of the direction of your front door.
For example, if you have a Southeast facing front door, you will focus on nourishing the wood feng shui element that “governs” this direction; while avoiding or minimizing decor items, colors, and shapes that belong to the elements of fire and metal.
The easiest way to strengthen the feng shui energy needed for your specific front door is to go for the right choice of color.
In feng shui, the energy of a front door is determined by its facing direction, so there are 8 different guidelines for front doors that face each of the 8 directions. A North facing door is a door with the compass reading from 337.5 to 22.5. The feng shui element of North direction is Water, and the corresponding feng shui bagua energy is the energy of Career & Path in Life.
Water Feng Shui Element Colors
Water feng shui element colors are blue and black.
In case of a North facing front door, there is one more feng shui element that you can use for an additional choice of colors. The element of Metal is nourishing for the Water element/creates it, thus Metal element colors are also good for a North facing front door.
Metal Feng Shui Element Colors
Metal feng shui element colors are white and gray.
So, the best feng shui colors for a North facing front door are (in order of their auspiciousness): blue, black, white, and gray.
Colors to Avoid
Avoid the following colors for your North facing front door: green, brown, yellow, red, purple, orange, and deep pink. These colors represent the elements of Wood, Earth, and Fire that are weakening/destructive for the Water element of North direction (according to the five elements destructive cycle).
If you can apply new paint to your front door, then all this info sounds easy and reasonable. However, in case you cannot repaint your front door for any reason, are there any additional, helpful options you can look at? Can you still have a good feng shui front door if the door color cannot be changed?
I noticed that when people talk about the feng shui of the front door, they mostly talk about the door’s color, the direction it is facing, and whether that area is filled with clutter.
However, those are just a few of many considerations, and you will soon discover that determining whether the front door brings good feng shui is not a simple feat.
In this post, you will see 19 factors that’ll help you determine how good your front door’s feng shui is, along with tips and cures from experts and personal experience.
Why is the Front Door SO Significant in House Feng Shui?
Think of the front door as the mouth of the house. It is where the house gets its intake of energy, whether they be good or bad. Having good energy coming through the front door is similar to a person eating healthy. The occupants of the house will be happily enjoying a comfortable home that’s full of positive energy.
In a more practical sense, the front door frames your first sight as you leave and enter the house. It works a little like first impression, and it impacts the mentality, mood, and attitude on how you start the day and how you feel when you get home.
With that said, let us see the 19 factors have the ability to affect our mentality and energy intake of the house.
The Door Itself
1. Size
The size of the front door should be proportionate to the house. You wouldn’t want a small door to a mansion or a large door to a tiny hut. It wouldn’t feel right, would it? Feng shui warns that disproportionate door sizes may cause problems with wealth and career.
The front door must also be larger than other doors inside the house. Though most houses today do not have this problem, I have seen master bedroom doors that are larger than front doors. When this happens, feng shui warns of problems with relationships, marriage, and emotional control.
The cure is to get a more proportionate-sized door. Though it sounds simple, it’ll require some investment on your part.
2. Color
There’s much about the color of the front door, so I won’t be going into much details here.
The type of color you need varies according to many factors. These include the direction it’s facing, the person’s Kua determined by the birth year, and the location it’s located in the house. It is mostly used for feng shui enhancement and cure. It is not the single factor that makes or breaks the feng shui of your front door.
Generally, most experts agree that the color should be more inviting and should easily catch the attention of the eye. Most importantly, it should also be a color that you like and are comfortable looking at every single day.
3. Material
The materials of most doors are usually metal, wood, or fiberglass. Even though you can choose either metal or wooden doors to balance the five elements of that area, I wouldn’t do it if the material is not within your taste. In other words, I wouldn’t sacrifice personal preferences over the choice of materials.
In addition to personal taste, the door should make you feel safe and protected. For instance, I’ve seen many apartments in Taiwan that added a metal door in front of the main door for added security.
Whichever material you choose, make sure that the door is aesthetically appealing and makes you feel safe.
4. Maintenance
Your door should be properly maintained because it is the first experience you have with the house. Here are some questions to tell if your front door is properly maintained: Does it open and close easily? Does it make any squeaky sound when you use it? Is it rusty? Are the paints falling off?
A poorly maintained door can take away all the positive energy in you as you enter the house. It is likely that as you enter that door, you’re thinking of all the problems that requires attention within the house. In short, it will dampen your mood.
Other times, going home may become a drag. You may feel like you’d rather stay out rather than going home. If you invite guests over, how do you think they would feel when they’re waiting right in front of your doorsteps, staring at a run-down door?
5. Direction It’s Facing
Whether the front door is facing your lucky direction is determined by your Kua number using the Eight Mansions formula. To give you a brief summary, there are four lucky and unlucky directions for each individual, and your front door should face one of your lucky direction. You can find your Kua number using the calculator provided by Kathryn Weber.
If the direction it’s facing is not a lucky direction, you can look into the five elements of the front door which is also determined by the direction it’s facing. If the five element is a match with you, you need not worry too much even if the front door is facing an unlucky direction. On a side note, the direction it’s facing can also help determine where the wealth location of your house is.
If you’d like to learn more about this, I have provided much detail of this method in my Feng Shui eBook as well as a case study on how it affected an individual’s life.
6. Where It’s Located in the House
Again, you will need your Kua number to determine whether the front door is located at a lucky area of the house. If it is not, you will need to use the five elements to determine how compatible your element is to the front door’s five elements. This method is similar to the one mentioned above, which I’ve outlined in detail in this eBook.
Another consideration about the location is whether the front door is easy to find.
The front door should be easily located by guests that are visiting the house and should never be at the back of the house (I’ve seen those) or on the side. I don’t know about you, but when I go visit these types of houses, I feel a bit intrusive. Further, I can easily be mistaken as an intruder by watchful neighbors when I lurk around searching for the entrance.
7. Opens Inward/Outward
If you haven’t noticed, most front doors open inwards where you or your guests can easily enter the house once the door opens. Conversely, for front doors that open outward, you and your guests may have to take a few steps back before entering the house.
Although this is a small detail, it gives a subtle feeling of how the house welcomes you.