Feng shui at home: the main ideas, room by room

• Qi (chi): the Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine describes the feng shui view that everything contains qi, the energy or life force. Practitioners arrange rooms so it can move without rushing or getting stuck.
• The commanding position: architect and feng shui teacher Anjie Cho says to place your bed, desk and stove where you can see the door, ideally diagonally across from it, without being directly in line with it.
• The five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water, which the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology describes as related in a cycle of creation and destruction. Cho gives examples: water feeds wood; water puts out fire.
• The bagua: a map the International Feng Shui Guild (IFSG) describes as a guide to the areas of a space that need more balance or focus. Its centre is treated as a neutral zone.
• Clutter: the IFSG defines clutter as anything that obstructs qi. Cho says clutter collects stagnant (yin) qi.

Practitioners use these to balance a room: a plant to add wood, a brass tray for metal, a ceramic pot for earth. Cho adds that dead or dying plants work against you. IFSG member Dee Oujiri matches rugs to elements, from deep blue and wavy for water to beige and terracotta for earth, and suggests a rug as a 'speed bump' where qi would rush down a long hallway.

Cho says your entry represents how you face the outside world, and advises keeping it clean, clutter-free and well lit, on a dimmer if possible. Where the front door lines up with a back door or a big window, Oujiri suggests a rug to slow qi down. Sean Chan, on the other hand, counts the idea that a straight line of doors 'drains wealth' among the myths he examines.

The main advice practitioners give for the living room is to place the sofa in the commanding position: facing the door, diagonally across from it, with a solid wall behind. The five-element table above is the usual way to choose colours and accessories for it.

Cho describes a bed directly in line with the door as the 'coffin position', and says the ideal is a bed from which you can see the door, with your back to a solid wall, usually diagonally across from it. If the bed can't move, she suggests a mirror that lets you see the door, and a solid headboard without bars or holes.

The Gale Encyclopedia notes the guidance that mirrors shouldn't face beds.

Cho's advice is to sit where you can see the door but aren't directly in line with it, diagonally across and facing it. Consultants may also suggest moving an office to a different room or reorganising storage, as the Gale Encyclopedia notes.

Cho includes the stove in the commanding position. Where you can't see the door while cooking, she suggests a mirror placed so you can. On colour, she calls metal (white and metallics) one of the better choices for a kitchen.

Sean Chan says a sink within about 60 cm of the stove, or facing it, sets water against fire. He separates them with at least a cabinet or a stretch of counter, with no objects needed, and notes that splashing and grease are practical reasons for the same layout. Vastu practitioners give the same advice for the same reason.

• Form school: the oldest branch, which reads the shape of the land and the flow of wind and water.
• Compass school: later techniques based on the eight directions, read with a luopan, a disc of formulas around a magnetic compass. The IFSG says Classical feng shui combines form and compass methods.
• Black Sect Tantric Buddhist (BTB): a modern school, associated with Thomas Lin Yun's temple in Berkeley, California, that lays the bagua from the front door (the 'three door method') instead of by compass. Cho, who practises BTB, says it doesn't use compass directions.

The biggest practical difference is how the bagua is laid over your home: by compass direction (classical and compass schools) or from the front door (BTB). Two consultants from different schools can give you different answers for the same room. Ole Bruun's Cambridge introduction describes these competing schools, in China and the newer Western ones.