Should your desk face the window, the wall, or the door?
Face into the room, with a solid wall behind your chair and the door in view at an angle. Feng shui calls this the command position: a mountain at your back, open ground before you, and nothing arriving unseen. A bare wall close in front, or a door or a window behind you, gives that seat away.
Do you sit with your back to the door?
Send one photograph that shows your desk, your chair and the door. LuckMove answers this question first, with your seat and the door marked on your photograph, then reads the rest of the room.
A mountain behind you, a bright hall ahead
Feng shui reads a seat the way it reads a house on open land. Behind it should rise a mountain, high, solid and steady. Before it should lie the bright hall, open ground where arriving chi slows and pools. And the door, the mouth chi comes in by, should be in sight. A desk with a wall at its back, the room spread out before it and the door in view at an angle holds all three, and feng shui calls it the command position, the best seat a study can offer.
There is an older picture folded inside it. In feng shui’s ideal landscape, the low hill that sits just in front of a house is called the table, as if the land itself had pulled up to a desk. Indoors the same picture is drawn small: you are the house, the desk is your table, and everything between you and the far side of the room is your bright hall, starting with the desktop itself. That is why feng shui asks you to keep the desktop clear. It is the nearest stretch of open ground, where chi gathers before it reaches you.
Sit like this and nothing moves behind you that you cannot see, so part of your mind stops keeping watch over your shoulder. Whoever comes in arrives where your eyes already are. Feng shui holds that a person in this seat stays put and thinks clearly, and that the work done there has something solid to lean on.
The door behind you. Feng shui wants something solid at a seat’s back and something to look at ahead. With your back to the door, the room’s comings and goings all happen behind you, and feng shui says the seat has lost command; people who work this way often find that any sound at their back pulls them around.
The door aimed at you. The door is the mouth of the room, and when its path runs straight at the chair, chi comes in like an arrow, too fast to settle, and breaks over whoever sits there. Feng shui holds that such a seat is never quite still; it feels like a place where someone is always about to interrupt.
A window at your back. Glass behind the chair is a mountain made of air. Chi slips past your back with nothing there to hold it, and you have nothing to lean on; feng shui reads it as work that starts easily and then runs out of breath before the end.
A bare wall up close. A desk pushed against a bare wall has no bright hall at all, and feng shui calls it being pressed from the front. A thought has nowhere to travel before it meets plaster, and many people find their ideas stay stuck and the room turns stuffy as the hours go by.
What to look for in your room
- At your desk you sit facing away from the door and cannot see who comes in.
- The room door lines up with your seat, so the path in from the door runs straight at you.
- Your seat has a window right behind it.
- The desk is pushed flat against a wall, so when you sit down you face the wall with no space in front of you.
Your seat has a solid wall behind it, you can see the door when you sit down, and there is open space in front of you.
Door to desk chair01Desk with your back to the door
A seat requires solid backing; the door commands movement.
Desk chair: backs onto the open doorway → rotate the desk to face the room while keeping a solid wall behind you
Do you sit with your back to the door?
Send one photograph that shows your desk, your chair and the door. LuckMove answers this question first, with your seat and the door marked on your photograph, then reads the rest of the room.
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How to fix it, in order
Measure first, then pull the desk off the wall and turn it to face into the room: a solid wall behind your chair, the door in view at an angle, open floor ahead. Let the path from the door run past the desk, never straight into it.
Until the desk can turn, let the door show in front of you. A small mirror on a stand, set beside the monitor and angled until the doorway appears in it, shows you whoever comes in before they reach you.
When the door’s path runs straight at your chair and the desk cannot leave it, give the chi something to go around. A money tree or a cast iron plant on the floor between door and chair breaks the line without closing off the room; where a plant cannot grow, a low screen does the same.
Where the desk has to keep a window behind it, give your back what the wall cannot. A chair with a high, solid back stands in for the mountain, and a blind lowered behind you while you work closes the gap the glass leaves.
If the desk must stay against a wall, open the wall. Distant hills or open water, hung at eye level straight ahead, lay out the bright hall that bare plaster cannot.
If you have cats or dogs
A plant on the floor between door and chair sits at nose height for a cat or a dog. Money tree (Pachira aquatica) and cast iron plant (Aspidistra elatior) are both on the ASPCA list of plants non-toxic to cats and dogs. Snake plant and peace lily, two office favorites, are on the same list as toxic, so leave them out.
ASPCA, Toxic and Non-Toxic Plants
Questions people ask
Settle the room first: a wall at your back, the door in sight at an angle, open space ahead. If you want a compass direction on top of that, the Eight Mansions school reads one from your birth date and names the way to face while you work. Your lucky directions →
Feng shui says the seat has lost command of the room: the door is where chi and people come in, and it is behind you. Turn the desk; until it can turn, a small mirror beside the monitor that shows the door lets you see who comes in.
Feng shui counts it a seat without a mountain: chi slips past your back and there is nothing to lean on, which it reads as work that starts well and fades. If the desk cannot turn, lower a blind behind you while you work and sit in a chair with a high, solid back.
Not in itself. A desk in the bedroom keeps one more rule: it should not face the bed, where study drifts toward sleep, and it should not put the door behind you. Turn it so a wall is at your back and the door sits off to one side. The bedroom desk in the rulebook →
A door behind the chair or aimed straight at it, a window at your back, a bare wall close in front. Then a beam or a hanging cabinet right over the desk, which feng shui reads as weight pressing on the seat, and a nest of cables underfoot, where chi snags and stops. The home office in the rulebook →