Bed Direction in Feng Shui: Eight House Rules for HDB and Condo Beds

Bed direction in feng shui is the compass direction your head points to when you lie on the bed. It is chosen from the auspicious directions of your Eight House (八宅) kua, after the form rules about the wall, the door and the window have been satisfied. Form decides which walls are allowed; the compass ranks the survivors.

How do I find which direction is best for my head?

Two sets of rules sit side by side, and they are easy to confuse: compass rules (which of the eight directions suits you, from your kua) and form rules (what the door, windows and walls physically do to the bed). Classical doctrine puts form first, so a perfect compass direction does not redeem a bed that the door slams into.

The compass part is mechanical. Your birth year and sex give a kua (命卦), one of eight trigrams, and the kua puts you in one of two groups. The Great Wandering Year (八宅大遊年) line transformation (the 八宅明鏡 (Eight House classic) tradition) then labels every direction with one of eight stars. The engine scores them as follows. Find your own number with the free Kua number calculator.

The four positive stars are the "auspicious" directions and the four negative ones are the ones to keep your head away from.

Key facts

• The Eight House system has 8 directions, each labelled with 1 of 8 stars scored from +3.0 (Vitality) to -3.0 (Severed Fate).
• There are 2 kua groups: East group (東四命) (坎 (north) 離 (south) 震 (east) 巽 (southeast)) and West group (西四命) (乾 (northwest) 坤 (southwest) 艮 (northeast) 兌 (west)).
• A man born in 1988 and a woman born in 1988 both have kua 震; a man born in 1990 has kua 坎 and a woman born in 1990 has kua 艮.
• The headboard direction is where the top of the head points while lying down, not where the feet point.
• A kua 坎 person's best head direction is southeast (巽, Vitality, +3.0), followed by east (震, Heavenly Doctor, +2.5).
• The engine cites the rule behind each score, for example "Kua number 坎 → 離宮 (S) is Longevity", from Great Wandering Year.

Find your own Kua number and bed directions: free calculator →

Which directions suit kua 坎?

The figure above and the table below show the eight positions for kua 坎. Here the 巽 (southeast) wall is the best head position, then 震 (east), 離 (south) and 坎 (north). The remaining four walls are the ones to avoid for the head.

Each kua gets its own table, which is why a copy-and-paste "best direction" list from the internet is wrong for most readers. The same wall that is Vitality for kua 坎 is Mishap for kua 乾.

What are the form rules for a bed, in order of severity?

These are conventions of the classical form school, applied as penalties by the engine (method note: the penalty sizes are the engine's, the rules are traditional).

1. Solid wall behind the headboard. The head needs backing (靠). A headboard against glass, including a bay window, fails this rule. If a window wall is unavoidable, use a tall solid headboard and heavy curtains, or keep the pillow on a solid wall with the glass on the bed's flank.
2. Stay out of the door's entry line (door facing the bed, 門沖床). The strip of space the doorway projects into the room should not run onto the bed, least of all onto the pillow. A wardrobe, tall shelf or desk placed between door and bed intercepts the line.
3. Feet not pointing squarely at the door. A foot bench or low cabinet settles mild cases.
4. Commanding position. From the pillow you should see the door, ideally diagonally. A door hidden behind your head is the pattern to avoid.
5. Bed crowded behind the door leaf. When the opened door stands beside the pillow, add a doorstop and a bedside table as buffer.
6. No mirror facing the bed, nothing heavy overhead, such as a beam or shelf over the pillow, and no toilet on the headboard wall.

Find your own Kua number and bed directions: free calculator →

How does this work in an HDB flat or condo?

The room you are in decides what is possible, so measure it before you decide anything.

• Facing and compass. Stand inside the unit at the main door and look out; that is the unit's facing. For the bed, what matters is the compass direction of the headboard wall, which you read with a phone compass held flat in the room. Read the plan of your unit, not the block, because a flat's bedrooms point in different directions.
• Which walls are candidates. List the walls that can take a bed head, strike out the ones that fail the form rules, then rank what remains by score. A wall shared with a toilet fails rule 6; if it is the only solid wall, the tool flags the defect and gives its remedy instead of hiding it.
• Condo glass. Floor-to-ceiling glazing on a bedroom wall fails rule 1 for that wall, however good its direction scores.

Two partners often belong to opposite groups. A man born in 1990 has kua 坎 (East group) and a woman born in 1990 has kua 艮 (West group). Their good directions do not overlap, so the couple picks the wall that serves the partner under more strain and compensates the other with their side of the bed.

What does a worked example look like?

Take the fictional 王大明, born 1988-03-15, whose kua is 震 (East group). His eight directions from Great Wandering Year are:

• South (離) is Vitality, +3.0.
• North (坎) is Heavenly Doctor, +2.5.
• Southeast (巽) is Longevity, +2.0.
• East (震) is Stability, +1.0.
• Southwest (坤) is Mishap, -1.0.
• Northeast (艮) is Six Killings, -1.5.
• Northwest (乾) is Five Ghosts, -2.0.
• West (兌) is Severed Fate, -3.0.

Suppose his bedroom has three possible headboard walls: south (solid), west (a window wall) and north (door on the same side). He strikes out the west wall twice: it is the Severed Fate direction and it is glass. The north wall has the second-best score but runs into the door's entry line, so it needs a wardrobe screen. The south wall scores +3.0 and has solid backing, so the pillow goes south, and the commanding-position check decides which end of the wall the bed sits at.

If he preferred north, the annual layer also matters: in 2027 the 5 Yellow (五黃) star sits in the north palace, and the flying stars guide explains how to weigh that overlay.

FAQ

Which direction should my head point when I sleep?

It depends on your kua. Your birth year and sex give a kua, and the Great Wandering Year table ranks all eight directions for you. Point your head toward the highest scoring direction, after the wall, door and window rules are satisfied.

What is the best bed direction for a kua 坎 person?

For kua 坎, the best head direction is southeast (巽, Vitality, +3.0), followed by east (震, Heavenly Doctor, +2.5). The remaining walls to avoid for the head are west, northwest, northeast and southwest.

Can I follow a bed direction rule if my HDB bedroom wall is glass or shares a toilet?

Form rules come first. A headboard against glass fails the solid backing rule, and a toilet on the headboard wall also fails. Floor-to-ceiling glazing on a condo bedroom wall fails that wall, however good its direction scores.

What if my spouse and I have different best bed directions?

This is common, because partners often belong to opposite kua groups. A man born in 1990 has kua 坎 and a woman born in 1990 has kua 艮. Their good directions do not overlap, so pick the wall that serves the partner under more strain.

Should my bed face the door?

Avoid feet pointing squarely at the door and avoid the door's entry line running onto the pillow. From the pillow you should see the door, ideally diagonally. A wardrobe, tall shelf or foot bench can settle mild cases.

Sources and method

• Kua and eight-star labelling: trigram line transformation, in the 八宅明鏡 tradition.
• Star scores (+3.0 to -3.0): the engine's weights for the eight stars (method note).
• Form rules (solid backing, door facing the bed, commanding position): classical form-school conventions, applied by the engine as penalties (method note).
• Annual overlay: the 5 Yellow and the Grand Duke (太歲) and Year Breaker (歲破) positions follow 協紀辨方書 (Qing almanac manual) and the annual flying-star order.
• Year boundary for charts: the Start of Spring (立春) convention of the 子平 (classical BaZi school) calendar.

Find your own kua and directions with the free reading at /start, or trace your bedroom, mark the door and windows, and see all four walls scored in the home tool at /fengshui.