Facing Direction Of A Home by Cecil Lee

1. If you are doing a Feng Shui assessment of an Apartment in the Building / Flat (Low floors ie. level 2 to level 7)
Take from the direction of your Main Door. This will be the facing of your home. For example, if from the center of the house to the main door it falls in the North-East. This house is a North-East facing house. However, if you have the habit of keeping your main door close most of the time, then use the frontage of the living room / balcony instead.
2. If you are doing a Feng Shui assessment of an Apartment in the Building / Flat (High floors ie. level 8 and onwards) Facing most likely is not where the main entrance is when this main entrance is inside the building.The Facing side is usually where most of the windows and the balcony are located because this is where most of the Qi is activated into the home. Also, when you share a building with other people, with you living on one of the floors, it may very well be that different floors have different Facings. Take from the frontage of the living room / balcony.
3. If you are doing a Feng Shui assessment of a Landed Property
Depending on your interior layout plan, you can choose the frontage of the house (usually by the living room view), or the main door which you enter.

We have to understand concepts like:
1.Facing and Sitting directions
2.The "Mouth-of-the-house".
These two are related.
For a landed property, often, the main door is assumed as the "mouth-of-the-house". Since quite-alot-of landed properties have their main entrance door facing the frontage. This is common because, often we drive-up to the front of the home. And we enter through this door. However, there are some landed properties that have their main entrance at the side of the home. For example, we drive in (deeper into the home). And after parking, the main door is at the side. The "mouth-of-the-house". Under Feng Shui, the mouth of the house is considered very important, because this is where qi comes into the home. And this qi is said to have an influence on the home. In a landed property, again, often, the main door is considered the "mouth-of-the-house". But often it is this collective main door and the frontage e.g. windows at this frontage, that is known as the facing direction. Therefore, we can understand that the facing direction is where air or majority of air is said to flow into the home. This is like when we drive an-open-top car, air literally flows at our face. And it is this majority of qi or air flow that we want to determine. And this is where, we consider the facing or mouth-of-the-house. Once we find this facing direction, the sitting direction is easy. Since it is directly opposite the facing direction.

Further to what I had mentioned, sometimes, it may be easier to determine the sitting position. Especially if there is a distinct hill or slope e.g. behind the property. We could "safely" say that the facing is directly opposite this. In Singapore, especially for the 3 room Housing and Development Board flats (HDB), we often find that we enter the apartment from the front. And it is easy to say that this is often the facing direction or the "mouth-of-the-house". However, nowadays, many apartments are squeezed so tight and clustered in a snake like formation, the main door can nearly be at any direction. For a condo or apartment, it is best to check on one's life-style habit. Does one often leave the main door open? Or close it most of the time? For many who live in a condo, I have seen majority of the residents close the main door (unless they fixed a grille at the main door). Yet, many do close this door. If we do close this door, then, it does not make much sense to say that this is the "mouth-of-the-house". Furthermore, many condos and even new HDB apartments have main doors at "odd" placement. And often, if we have to negotiate a turn into the home from the main door, most likely, this may not be the natural "facing direction". This is similiar to what I had mentioned for a landed property earlier, where if the main door is at the side. And if there are other landed properties where this main door faces the side of the neighbour's apartment, most likely this should not be the main door.
Look at it this way, countries like Singapore and Hong Kong have majority of their residents staying in an apartment (condo or HDB) and Feng Shui for apartments is quite modern. And as mentioned above, the main door can be located at very odd locations and it should not be construde as the main door. I believe, many of such practitioners either live in the stone age or most likely wear spectacles but if one peers closely at their spectacles, these spectacles have "tunnel vision lens". Therefore, check to see where is most likely the "mouth-of-the-house". And in many of the common approaches are:
1. If the home has four sides of windows, try to figure out, firstly which side has more light. The idea of more light is more practical than the amount of wind coming into a home.
2. More light would often suggest, that there are more floor area of window or the mouth-of-the house.
3. To use the amount of wind blowing into the windows etc.. may not be an exact science, since, high /low pressures within a day can differ. Therefore, wind can blow from any side of the home at any given time. This is particuarly true for an island like Singapore, which is surrounded by water. And it is said that in a high pressure days, air circulate either clock-wise or anti-clockwise for low pressure days.

The idea that the higher one's apartment is, we should take the reading from the balcony or the location where most light comes in makes more sense also. Many people feel that when our apartment goes as high as 6, 7 or 8th storeys, and if we do see much light coming thru, here, then this should be the mouth-of-the house. However, if one lives in a highrise, and if our views are blocked by an immediate neigbhouring block and if we have the habit to open the main door (leaving it open most of the time), then, even if at a higher storey, we could then perhaps, use this as the main door. Given, the above examples, one can therefore see that there is no right or wrong answers. More importantly, if you do check on a practitioner, check to see if the practitioner use the term "IT DEPENDS". If so, the practitioner is most likely a better practitioner - who does not go for only one method. If the practitioner - says that every other method is WRONG! It must be the main door, please steer clear of this "dead-wood", myopic practitioner! Unfortunately, there are many of these in Singapore. It shows how inflexible, such people are.

Feng Shui was developed at the time where there were few if any highrise. And, it is very sad to say that many of such schools, feel that only their method is RIGHT and sometimes, these practitioners will quote some famous practitioners dead or alive. Who cares, do remember the fundamentals and we are better off.