Practical Feng Shui: Mouth of Chi and the Auspicious Front Door
As we are winding down the 15 days of the New Chinese Year of the Wood Horse celebrations, I wanted to talk about one of the important subjects: the importance of good Feng Shui for your front door.
Traditional Chinese red door with lion, or Pi Yao, protector knockers.
According to Feng Shui, the front door is the “mouth” of your house. It is through here that the energy – CHI – is breathed in and enters your dwelling. Speaking in the ancient Chinese terms, chi is picky so to speak, and the more attractive your front door is, the more of a chance good chi will pick your door for entry. Akin to how we always try to keep our lips well-mosturized and in good shape – women go as far as using bright lipstick to highlight the attractiveness of their mouth – you want to keep your front door clean, in excellent shape and looking as good as possible.
Traditional Chinese doors are bright red, like the red lipstick women had used for ages to highlight their lips. Nowadays, women use more subtle, and perhaps more tasteful colors to emphisize their lips. I personally love red doors, but you don’t have to. One of the best ways to harmonize your front door is to have its color go with the ELEMENT of the sector of your house where the door is located. For instance, if the door is in the north – make it blue or black, to go with the color of water, the ruling element of the north.
So my point is, there are many ways to emphasize and harmonize your front door. But as with anything, balance is key. After all, Feng Shui is the discipline of ultimate harmony and balance. You don’t want your front door to scream: “Pick me!” But of course, you don’t want your door to be invisible to the benevolent chi either.
We have recently moved to our new house. It is an old town Victorian, which are abundant in Upstate NY, and while the house has been renovated and kept in very good condition, we are still in the process of re-energizing and re-modeling it to reflect our presonalities and taste, as well as Feng Shui-ing it to my specifications.
One of the dilemmas we had was with our front door. The previous owner had been using exclusively the back door for years, ever since they lost the keys to their antique front door lock. As custom replacement keys would have been too expensive, they just stopped using the door. Well, it really is NOT a good idea to abandon the usage of your front door – it’s akin to neglecting your lips and mouth. What would happen if you did that? If you use your back door a lot, it is still important to at least once in a while use your front door as well.
Our original massive wood door is thick and solid and, after having researched doors available on the market, we have decided to keep it. The doors available for sale presently are NOT nearly as thick and solid, plus most of them are artificial. Our door is stained wood, which harmonizes very well with the eastern (wood) sector where it’s located, as well as its facing direction.
It is also better to have a door that is solid, without windows. It adds both implied and real protection to the house.
However, with its heavy, dark, antique bronze, non-functioning lock, our dark wooden door looked, well… too dark. We decided not to keep the original antique lock as it failed to add to the door. We needed a slick, shiny brass lock, which would provide a focal point,as well as refresh and brighten up the corner. Also, it was a great idea to contemporize the door a bit, as too much of an antique feel normally weighs down on chi.
Our door after we took out the old lock. I love this photo, which for some reason reminds me of the Chronicles of Narnia – it’s like peeking into another dimension:
New lock from the outside:
Front door from the inside. Notice how much the lock brightens up the door. The color of the old lock looked like the electric switch to the left of the door and blended with the door too much.
I am pretty happy with the result. What’s left is to re-stain the door when the weather gets warmer, as right now Upstate is coverd with snow.
Snow, snow, snow from our front porch:
In addition to the front door proper, you want to take good care of the area just outside your door. Protecting your front door with a covered porch, or at least a canopy, is a very good idea, both for practical reasons (as in, it’s easier to fumble for the key when you are not rained or snowed on), and for Feng Shui reasons.
In Upstate, practically all houses have covered front porches, and oftentimes covered back porches as well, since rain and snow here are in abundance. Front porch is also so great to help the chi expand and settle before your front door! And how nice it is to sit on your porch in the summer, sipping tea and chatting with friends…
Our front porch in winter, with snowed in chairs and rugs. Notice our red cardinal flag? In addition to birds generally being excellent Feng Shui, colorful flags upfront are great for attracting chi to your front door. Feng Shui tip: you always want to hang your flag on the left of the door, so the left – dragon side – would dominate over right – tiger side.
This porch is work in progress of course, as in the summer we’ll paint it more interesting colors and add new cool elements.
So, on one hand, you want your entrance to stand out, so benevolent chi could find it and be “interested” in entering your abode; on another hand, you want to protect your entrance from undesirable, or harmful, chi, including incremental weather, as well as excessive activity, to name a few. Of course, for the heavy duty protection even against things like burglary, we use door guardians. The best ones are FU DOGS. We also use lion/ fu dog door knockers.
This antique Chinese door is a good illustration of my points. Notice pretty cinnabar red color, beautiful artwork, red lanters on both sides to raise chi, a canopy, lion knockers, and fu dogs on both sides of the door. Pretty cool!
It is also good to have some steps leading to your front entrance, as being elevated above street level is always good Feng Shui.
My completely snowed in front steps with 2 landings, leading to the porch. Two landings are a lot of climbing, but it’s great from the Feng Shui pespective as it allows the benevolent chi to slow down and meander, which makes the chi even more benevolent (plus, a bit of excersize never hurts, lol). You never want sharp, fast chi entering your door as it creates discord and nervousness in your home.
Notice snow-covered mounds on both sides of steps on first landing? We had so much snow that my guardian fu dogs have been totally burried.
Now that we’ve thoroughly looked on the outside, let’s take a sneak peek at what constitutes good Feng Shui on the inside of the front door.
First and foremost, you want your door to look good, be uncluttered and also have a nice rug, which allows chi to settle and enter your home in style. For now, I chose this very durable red rug with a border of flowers. It brightens my front hall and introduces the element of celebration into my home. It’s auspicious to be surrounded by flowers – you can never go wrong with that.
In addition, notice these elements:
1) Pedestal lantern with rose quartz lamp on top, on the right. Light invites the chi in and the tall lantern also rises the chi. Natural rose quartz is considered one of the best crystal space energizers and harmonizers, as rose quartz is the stone of love. All this is very auspicious.
Just to mention: when I feng shui my home, I design it in such a way that many elements serve multiple purposes at the same time. I can’t mention all of this in one short article, but as an example, the rose quartz lamp here actually fulfills at least five different Feng Shui functions. These are: 1. attracting and welcoming the chi entering front door, 2. being a focal point, 3. rising chi, which lightens up the space. The next 2 are more technical: 4. supressing annual No.3 argumentative star (Flying Star Feng Shui), and 5. energizing natal No.8 Mountain Star residing in this corner (Flying Star Feng Shui), which is responsible for good relationships, popularity and health. It is also good for writers, speakers and scholars. More about Flying Star and other schools of Feng Shui on my Feng Shui page.
2) And now, back to our story! On the left, there is a cozy seating group with handcarved and pearl-encrusted Chinese rosewood chairs. This allows one to feel comfortable right from the moment you enter. Our benevolent chi simply loves that, I tell ya!
3) This is important: the entry hall is very spacious and open. Excellent Feng Shui, called “the Bright Hall.”
As everything in life, my new home is a work in progress. There is so much more I could say about the “Bright Hall” alone: for instance, the auspicious lighting and artwork, the importance and function of an altar in the entry hall, focal points, energizers, protection and more!
And we haven’t even gotten to any rooms yet! But the good news is that the intriguing art and science of Feng Shui is so vast and multifaceted that we have many potential topics of interest, which can be covered in my future posts as we continue our Feng Shui journey!
I hope you enjoyed this new Feng Shui adventure!
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Lada Ray,
Internationally Certified Feng Shui Master Practitioner
Copyright 2014 Lada Ray. No reproduction of any part of this post is permitted without author’s expressed permission. Brief quotations with full credit & linkback, and WP reblogs are welcome.
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