There are many questions about how to divide up your home when you are trying to understand its feng shui but no more so than when you have an open concept home. When you have a home that’s open concept, how do you apply feng shui to a large open space?
Let’s go over some of the ways that an open concept has both advantages and disadvantages.
Where are the corners?
When a home is wide open, it’s sometimes hard to know where the corners are located. However, every house whether it’s open concept or not has four walls.
That’s why it’s so important to have a diagram of your home. Having one will help you divide your floor plan up into nine equal squares, often referred to as the lo shu square. A lo shu square is like a tic tac toe diagram and is much easier to apply than a bagua, which is an octagon.
Once that’s applied to your floor plan, you can see exactly where your corners fall.
The center is all-important.
When a home has an open center, this is an incredibly positive feature for the home as it can bring more of the family together into the center, a sector that counts for health, wealth, and happiness. Having an open center is always a benefit.
Benefits multiply.
Having an open concept home is wonderful when you have especially good energy either natally (when the house was built) or by the annual or monthly energies. When they’re beneficial, the positive chi will spread throughout the house, helping in other areas that might be afflicted.
But problems can spread….
When you have an open concept home, you can sometimes have an issue with a monthly or annual affliction that can encourage the negative chi of the affliction to spread out. Much like water that seeks its own level, chi will do this as well.
Open center challenges.
One of the challenges of an open center, especially if this is a main area, is that feng shui can be applied to all areas of the house in the main living space by adding activators to the corners of the living room.
However when the center is open, there are often little or no walls to add accents to boost feng shui.
What’s important to remember is to try to gauge the corner of an open concept space in some way by adding a table or a chair and a lamp, perhaps.
Open concept with a kitchen – good idea or not?
These are very popular in America, but in general, kitchens are viewed as an area that presses down luck, and for that reason, they’re not considered to be helpful with feng shui.
Unfortunately, a kitchen can open the house to all the mess of cooking and cleaning up and provide an open view to working in the kitchen. Also, if a kitchen can be viewed from the front door, this can cause a loss of money.
Wide open view.
While many homeowners enjoy the spaciousness of an open concept house, there is also a feeling of a lack of privacy and when the front door to the home opens, that everything can be seen from the door.
Although this type of home can seem open and inviting, it can also hinder privacy, and doesn’t offer the cozy appeal, and visual interest of a house with a traditional foyer that helps to slow down chi, and create a flow of the rooms.
An optimal way to utilize an open space concept is to have a foyer that doesn’t afford a complete view of the whole house, but allows chi to enter more slowly and then flow into the house.
This means that visitors to the door won’t be able to take in the view of the whole house, but once inside, they can walk in and then the house opens up to them.
When there is a lack of flow, this can sometimes lead to energy (money, opportunity, relationships, health) flowing out of the house too quickly.
This can take the form of a poison arrow, especially if the front door is opposite another door, window, fireplace or view of the pool. When there is an affliction, this poison arrow can become dangerous creating injury, accidents, loss or financial difficulties.
This foyer is large and welcoming but allows chi to gather as well as provide a layer of privacy.
The challenge
In feng shui, flow of energy is important. If it flows too quickly (the eye takes in everything at once), this can lead to problems and difficulties.
A house like this can be balanced by adding a screen, a doorway or sheer curtain that helps to offset the rush of visual energy (chi) and add a layer of privacy from the front door.
During the pandemic, some families found in their open concept houses that they had no private space to retreat to and that everyone was on top of everyone else.
If possible, try creating some separate seating areas or some nooks to break up an overly large space where you can sometimes feel lost and create an ebb and flow in the chi of the room.
