Traditional Feng Shui for Home Office Success

In Design Your Office with Intuitive Feng Shui, we recommended designing your home office to support your work habits.

Having done that, let’s step back into more traditional approaches to Feng Shui.

MIX IN TRADITIONAL FENG SHUI COLORS AND SHAPES

Once you’ve designed your work areas intuitively, use traditional Feng Shui to turbo-charge your home office.

Consider the general nature of your homebased business.

Let’s say that you run a personalized dating service. Treat your entire office–or at least the area around your desk–as a “romance corner.” Paint it a juicy, vivid, tropical pink. Or, try painting one wall glossy red and the other three matte white or a very pale pink.

Try to have two of everything in your office, as much as is practical. If you have pens in a cup on your desk, try to have two of each kind. A vase of flowers should always have an even number of flowers in it.

If you’re managing PR, red and violet (both fame and prosperity colors) should dominate your office. If you’re an accountant, use Mardi Gras colors if green, gold, and violet symbolize prosperity to you.

Here are some other careers and their luckiest Bagua aspects. These are general guidelines, not rules. If your career seems to fit a different area of the Bagua, apply its colors and elements instead.

• Writing, publishing, data management, teaching, private tutoring: Knowledge area
• Family counselling, real estate: Stability area
• General investing and investment counselling, accounting, money management: Money area
• Advertising, personal shopper, organizing, website design, work in the media: Fame area
• Relationships counselling, quiltmaking, catering: Romance area
• Art, inventing or inventors’ services, day care, adoption services: Creativity area
• Work related to travel or spirituality, mentoring, networking, nonprofits, some B2B* services: Travel/Helpful People area
• Career counselling, temp or contract work, Human Resources work: Career area
• Health, nutrition, some grooming, animals, and careers that don’t fit anywhere else: Health area

BALANCE YOUR LUCKY ELEMENTS

Check the balance of Feng Shui elements in your home office.

Do you have an equal balance of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water? Have you tilted the scales very slightly to favor the element related to your work?

Remember that broad areas that represent an element–your floor color and your walls, for example–need to be offset more than small elements such as a delicate vase or a small picture.

ADJUST YOUR HOME OFFICE SO THAT IT WORKS BEST FOR YOU

Once your home office is set up so that it supports your personal work style and you’ve mixed in traditional Feng Shui elements to turbo-charge your office, spend at least two weeks without changing anything… unless it’s driving you crazy, of course. Sometimes, it can feel awkward to shift from less productive work habits to efficiency. Give your new office design and decorating scheme a chance to “settle in” before making additional changes.

READ MORE about Feng Shui and business success in books such as:

• Lillian Too’s Little Book of Feng Shui at Work
• Feng Shui Strategies for Business Success
• Feng Shui for the Workplace

*B2B services are any business-to-business services, such as phone directory advertising. Website management (as opposed to design) would probably go here, for example.