What the tradition actually says about the twelve feng shui questions people ask most.
Feng shui has specific, traceable answers to the questions that come up again and again: the door colour, the fish tank, the mirror, the wealth corner, the direction you face. Some of the most repeated lines about feng shui trace back to one author paraphrasing another, paraphrasing a magazine from 1998, and along the way a specific answer rounded off into a general one. Working practitioners use the specific version; the source texts never said the general one.
This article goes back to what the tradition and the working practice actually say, item by item, for twelve of the questions people ask most.
1. The front door colour: what the tradition says
You'll often hear that a red front door brings wealth. The tradition's answer depends on which direction the door faces: south-facing doors traditionally work in red because south is the fire direction. A red door facing north (a water direction) is fighting itself.
There is no single lucky door colour. Pick one that suits the house, the street, and the climate. Visible matters more than symbolic.
2. The fish tank by the front door: what the tradition says
A fish tank is one of the traditional wealth cures. Whether it works in your home depends on six things: the direction the door faces, the size of the tank, where in the room it sits, how clean the water is, whether the fish are healthy, and whether you actually enjoy fishkeeping.
Most people place one badly, neglect it, and end up with a dirty tank that drains every other quality of the room. The traditional cure becomes the new problem.
In practice: a fish tank is high-maintenance. If you do not love fishkeeping, skip it. A small healthy plant in the same spot does most of the job for none of the labour.
3. Mirrors and what they reflect: what the tradition says
Mirrors are powerful in feng shui because they reflect. They double whatever they point at, good or bad.
A mirror facing your front door reflects guests (and qi) straight back out. A mirror reflecting clutter doubles the clutter. A mirror behind your bed creates the bedroom most consistently flagged as a sleep problem in both the traditional and the modern reading.
Use mirrors where you want to amplify what they are pointing at. Not as a default fix.
4. The bagua mirror over the front door: what the tradition says
You'll sometimes hear that every front door needs a bagua mirror above it. The tradition treats it as a specialised tool, not a default: a bagua mirror is used by trained practitioners to deflect what they consider a named external threat (a sharp corner from a neighbouring roofline, for example). Hanging one preemptively does nothing helpful and is sometimes read as aggressive by neighbours.
If you ever genuinely need one, a practitioner will tell you. Most homes do not.
5. Lucky bamboo in the wealth corner: what the tradition says
Lucky bamboo is a Dracaena, which is not really bamboo. It is a hardy houseplant that survives in low light and is sold as a wealth charm.
If you like it, get one. It is a decent plant. If it dies (and they often do, in homes that are darker than the seller suggests), it is worse in the wealth corner than no plant at all. A dying plant is a dying-plant signal regardless of which corner it lives in.
6. The best-facing direction: what the tradition says
You'll sometimes hear that south-facing homes are the best. The tradition's answer is personal, not universal.
A south-facing home suits a person whose Kua number is one, three, four, or nine. (Those are the East group Kua numbers.) For a person whose Kua number is two, six, seven, or eight (the West group), south-facing is one of their unfavourable directions.
There is no universal best-facing direction. There is your best-facing direction, which depends on your birth year and gender. (The Kua calculator gives it to you in ten seconds.)
7. Living near water: what the tradition says
Water in feng shui is associated with wealth, yes. But the tradition is very specific about what kind of water.
Slow, gentle, contained water that flows toward you (a pond, a slow river, a fountain you can hear) is the prosperous configuration.
Fast, loud, or destructive water (a river you live downstream of, a property under flood threat, a fountain that has been off and stagnant for a year) is not. Some "waterfront" homes are auspicious; others are the opposite.
The rule is not near water. The rule is near calm water that you face.
8. The wealth corner colour: what the tradition says
This runs the same logic as the front door colour, in reverse. The wealth corner is the south-east of the home. South-east in the five-element system is wood. Wood is fed by water and burned by fire. The colour for fire is red.
So a red wealth corner literally burns the wood, the opposite of what the tradition recommends.
The actual colours for the wealth corner are green, blue, and purple. (Purple is the cultural "wealth" colour in Chinese tradition; the other two come from the element logic.)
9. Mirrors in the bedroom: what the tradition says
The actual rule is much narrower than "no mirrors": a mirror that reflects you while you sleep is what the tradition warns against. (And the modern reading agrees, for the same reason: movement in your peripheral vision while half-asleep keeps the nervous system alert.)
A small mirror on a dresser that does not face the bed is fine. A wardrobe mirror that faces the bed is the case to work around; cover it at night.
10. Feng shui outside Chinese homes: what the tradition says
The principles are about space, light, air, sightlines, and human ergonomics. None of those are culture-specific.
There is a cultural layer (the wealth colours, the dragon symbolism, the Chinese New Year considerations) that does not transfer. The structural advice does.
11. When you need a practitioner's help: what the tradition says
Some homes do benefit from time with a professional: the ones with complex floor plans, the ones with major construction decisions ahead, the ones with a serious problem a non-expert cannot diagnose.
Most homes do not need that. The eighty percent of feng shui that matters is on the 14-point room harmony checklist, the twenty-six universal-safe changes article, and your own Kua number.
Professional guidance has its place. It is not the entry point.
12. How long results take: what the tradition says
Some feng shui interventions read as immediate (the tradition reads the command-position bed as something you feel the first night). Some take longer (the wealth-corner work is meant to compound over months).
The tradition's expectation is months, not weeks. The modern reading agrees: behavioural changes from environmental design need time to settle into routines.
Run an intervention for three months before deciding whether it worked. If a change hasn't paid off in three months, that is the moment to try something different.
What to do with this.
Most of the work in feng shui is subtraction, not addition. Keep the home to the parts of the tradition that survive a close look, and let the rest go quiet.
The twenty-six universal-safe changes article is a good place to start.
If you are still skeptical, the evidence article goes through which parts of feng shui have empirical support and which parts are pure tradition. It is the article we are most proud of on the site.
If you want your own four favourable directions (Kua number), it takes ten seconds.
Twelve questions answered. About a hundred more in the practice. We will get to them.