If you are at all familiar with feng shui, the ancient Chinese practice of balancing your surroundings, you may have heard that one should never sit with their back to a door.This simple, general truth is based on the theory that you will feel uncomfortable and unable to focus well if you have your back to the opening of a room. This is also just plain common sense and most people can relate to this general premise. We all feel most stable with a view in front of us and a solid wall behind us.

But for the home office, this edict may not be as relevant or important to adhere to. What goes on in a commercial environment, with fellow co-workers literally barging in on you in your office, is completely different than the often serene and quiet atmosphere of working at home.

What ranks as being more important in terms of how to ideally set up your office is as follows:

1. Become aware of the shape of the room, the height of the ceiling and the location of windows and views. Pick a spot where you can function with the most practicality within your home office. If the ceiling is sloped, try to sit on the side of the room where the ceiling is higher. Try to take advantage of some views, unless you think you are a procrastinator and that easy views will trigger too much day dreaming.

2. In traditional feng shui, every room in a house is a micro-version of the house and it can be determined by a well-trained feng shui consultant where the most positive section of a room is. If it is a practical area to use, that is the most important goal.

3. To be able to sit in your best personal directions (based on your birth year) can be another layer to apply to the room if it is not in conflict with everything else. As an example, a person born in 1979 does well sitting at a desk facing south or north and that is preferable to west if at all possible.

Sometimes the furnishings and equipment in a room can act as feng shui remedies. For example, if metal is needed in all or part of a room, a metal file cabinet or metal desk can actually work.

If a room is windowless, it is nice to have scenic art work that gives an optical illusion of depth to counter balance the confinement often felt with all solid walls.

Having full spectrum lighting in the room will be less draining than fluorescent lighting. For a room that is small, mounting pictures a little high on the wall will draw the eyes upward and make the room feel bigger.

Sometimes people chose a particular room in their home to be their office if it happens to be closest to the “public” areas of their home, which means near the entry or living room. If you have clients or customers who come to your home office, you may not want them to walk through the majority of your home just to get to your office. But this sometimes ends up being in conflict with more important goals.

In traditional feng shui, we can determine which rooms in the house have the greatest potential to attract wealth and it would be more important to use the “wealth” room as an office (even if it were in the back of the house).

Another practical tip, which is a thoroughly modern feng shui predicament, is to note the location of a computer. Try to avoid having a computer near a wall where someone sleeps just on the other side of the wall. The frequent proximity of electrical fields (which go through walls) could undermine a person’s nervous system.

The subject of EMF’s (electro-magnetic fields) and RF’s (radio frequencies)is a whole other topic unto itself. The home office is generally a hub for the computer, router, modem, cell phone and even more
electronic devices which can be remediated with EMF and wi-fi shielding devices. You can go to the “Shop On Line” section of my website for more information on that.

No matter whether we are talking about modern electrical hazards of the home office or the more traditional Feng Shui aspects, this is usually a critical are of the house since we may spend many hours per day in that zone.

Author: Kartar Diamond
Company: Feng Shui Solutions (R)
from the Income, Money Matters and Career Blog Series