What feng shui sees at Mount Vernon

Front door to back door, the through-hall

Feng shui holds that chi travels with the wind, and the wind scatters it. When the front door and the back door stand on one straight line, chi comes in at the front and leaves at the back without turning once, and nothing stays behind. That is the through-hall.

The central passage at Mount Vernon is a through-hall of exactly this kind. It is the way into the house and runs its full width, with a door at the west end facing the lawn and a door at the east end facing the Potomac. In the heat of a Virginia summer, both doors stood open and the family gathered in the passage for the breeze off the river.

The same breeze that cools a body is, to feng shui, chi draining away. Feng shui does not fear the wind; it fears a wind that never turns. The fix is gentle: a screen just inside the front door. Chi meets the screen and turns, and chi that turns, gathers.

A drive that curves its way in

Feng shui reads roads the way it reads water: what runs straight strikes, and what curves carries feeling. A straight road aimed at a door brings chi on hard; a curving one gathers it and slows it, so it arrives at the door ready to settle.

The drive into Mount Vernon curves in and out of the woods, and near the end it leaves the central axis and splits into lanes to the north and south, which bring visitors around to the west front door. No one arrives at the house head-on; everyone is led to it.

That is the very answer feng shui gives for a road aimed at a door: let the way in bend. A curving approach brings in what the tradition calls chi with feeling, unhurried and calm, and feng shui holds that a home reached this way keeps a steadier, more settled life.

Open ground before the door

The open ground a door looks onto is its outer bright hall. Feng shui wants it wide, level and clear, so arriving chi has room to settle and the household has room to grow. An old saying asks for a bright hall wide enough to hold ten thousand horses.

Before Mount Vernon’s west front door lies the Bowling Green, a broad lawn edged with serpentine paths. Laying it out meant taking down the brick-walled gardens that had blocked the view west from the house.

What came down were walls; what opened was a whole outer bright hall. Feng shui holds that when the ground outside the door is open, people step out with an easy mind and their affairs open up, while a cramped doorway leaves them boxed in. The serpentine paths around the lawn add one more curve with feeling.

What your own home can take from it

• If the front door looks straight through to a back door or a big window, stand a screen or an open slatted divider just inside the door, and draw heavy curtains on the far side at night. Feng shui holds that a through-hall lets money come and go; break the line and the chi turns, and what turns, stays. The front door
• Let the front walk bend if it can; where a street or a driveway points straight at the door, plant a dense hedge in between. Road aimed at the door
• Clear ground right outside the front door: no bins, no stacked boxes, and the car parked to one side. That clear ground is your home’s bright hall. Cramped space in front of the door

Questions people ask