Improve Feng Shui in the Home

Successful design is measured by how well we live in our spaces. Feng shui focuses on chi, or the life force that flows throughout. In holistic design theory, that force is considered our personal energy force. It needs to be nurtured, enhanced, and encouraged to flow freely in order to bring health and well-being to us through our surroundings.

Encouraging Flow

Flow is encouraged in a number of simple ways. First, we must remove obstacles or distractions that prevent chi from flowing freely. There should be multiple pathways into a house as one enters, not just a stairway running up and away from the central living spaces of the home. Placing mirrors to reflect and draw energy into other parts of the home is one solution. Chi also likes smooth, rounded surfaces. Soft treatments, rounded table edges, and softened corners in our rooms all help the flow of energy throughout the home. Chi is personal; it travels with us and is unique to each one of us. Finding balance for each of us in our living space brings a sense of balance and well-being to our lives.

Katherine Kaess, founder of Soulspaces International, is a traditionally trained interior designer who has come to embrace the power and energy of space and its impact on our lives. “I help people better understand their relationship with their space,” Kaess says of her holistic approach to design.”Mine is a very intuitive approach,” she says. Her goal is to empower people to trust their instinct and design their living spaces accordingly. “My biggest role is as a facilitator, not as a designer. I talk people through their own space.” Kaess applies many tools when helping homeowners and architects to design interior space, including feng shui, color theory, architectural theory, and ergonomics. The result is “holistic design, design from all aspects,” Kaess says.

Finding Balance

“It’s all about balance,” Kaess says when describing how to think about space and design for the individual. In today’s homes we must balance the personal and the technological, the acting and the resting self, the community and the individual, the outgoing and the reflective. Kaess begins by giving her clients a questionnaire to discover what is currently going on in their lives and homes, how they’ve related to past homes, and their hopes for themselves and their space. Kaess then applies traditional design principles; color; elements like water, earth, fire, and air; and a bagua, or feng shui map, that shows the domains (or zones) of the house. “The goal is to pull together something harmonious” that is unique to the homeowners but guided by ancient spiritual principles.

Balance includes maintaining the natural in our lives, so holistic design often minimizes the glaring presence of technology, softening its role by enclosing it in cabinets, draping it in colorful fabrics, or placing it behind screens. As an antidote to the depersonalization of our culture, holistic design encourages conversational groupings in which chairs face one another and create conversational spots. Couches face each other with a table in between. Seating does not face toward the television, but at an angle to it.

Natural materials are also favored, including natural fabrics, stone, wood, and metal. In most holistic design, there is an attempt to steer away from chemically-treated, unnatural products to the greatest extent possible. “I’m a big proponent of using as many natural materials as possible,” Kaess says. “It’s all about awareness of the impact of your house on you and you on the earth.”