The Feng Shui Bagua Map: How to Use the Eight Trigrams in Your Home

What the Bagua Actually Is

The bagua (八卦) means 'eight trigrams' and comes from the Book of Changes, the I Ching. Each trigram is built from three lines, each either unbroken (yang) or broken (yin). Read together, the eight combinations describe eight fundamental patterns of change: the creative, the receptive, the arousing, the gentle, the dangerous, the clinging, the joyful and the creative-force.

In feng shui the trigrams are laid over the nine-palace Lo Shu grid, which gives the familiar square diagram with eight outer palaces and a centre. The whole scheme is a compass system, so it is always relative to the building's facing direction, not to your street, your postcode or the way the drawing is oriented on paper.

Earlier Heaven and Later Heaven

Two arrangements exist. The Earlier Heaven or Fu Xi bagua places the trigrams with the two fundamental forces — Qian and Kun, heaven and earth — on opposite sides of the diagram. The Later Heaven or King Wen bagua is the one used in feng shui, because it places the trigrams in the positions that correspond to the eight compass directions. If a diagram you have found has the trigrams in Fu Xi order, it is a cosmological diagram rather than a feng shui map.

The Eight Trigrams and Their Meanings

Here is the complete reference. Read down each column to see everything one direction carries.

Reading the trigrams

The three lines of a trigram read from bottom to top. Kan, for example, is a broken line, a solid line, a broken line: water, and the danger of water — a pit, a hole, the risk of getting trapped. That is why the north is associated with the career and with the risks of a career. The trigram carries a warning as well as a gift.

The Lo Shu Grid and the Nine Palaces

The trigrams sit on the Lo Shu magic square, which is the numerical backbone of the system.

Every row and every diagonal adds up to fifteen. In the Later Heaven arrangement the numbers correspond to the trigrams, which is why the palace names in feng shui are often given as trigram plus number, for example Xun 4 for the southeast and Qian 6 for the northwest.

The centre palace

Five sits in the middle and carries no trigram. It represents the whole house rather than one area of it, and it should be open and lightly furnished. Never put a toilet, a stove or a heavy storage stack in the centre. In an open-plan home the centre usually falls on a dining table or a kitchen island, which is perfectly acceptable.

The two classical positions

The southeast is the Di position, the wealth position, and the southwest is the Gui position, the honour corner. These are the same two positions in every house — but which physical corner they occupy depends on the facing direction, which is the single most important consequence of understanding the bagua.

Drawing Your Own Bagua Map

You can overlay the bagua on your own plan in ten minutes.

1. Take the facing direction. Stand outside your front door and read the bearing the door points, ideally with a phone compass at least three metres from cars and metal.
2. Draw your floor plan to scale. North at the top, then mark the front door and the windows.
3. Place the centre. The centre of the plan is number five.
4. Fill in the trigrams. With the facing direction known, place Kun (southwest) opposite Qian (northwest), and Kan (north) opposite Li (south) — and then work the rest around from there.
5. Label the palaces. Northwest Qian, west Dui, northeast Gen, south Li, southeast Xun, east Zhen, north Kan, southwest Kun, centre five.

Which direction is 'wealth' then?

Here is the part that confuses most people. The trigram and the physical compass direction are fixed, but the assignment of purpose is relative. For a south-facing house, the southeast corner is the wealth position. For a north-facing house, the wealth position is the northeast. For an east-facing house it is the south. In every case it is the corner that sits 45 degrees clockwise from the facing direction. Work that out once and you have it for that property.

What Each Direction Is For

The practical use of the bagua is not decoration — it is assigning rooms and activities to the positions that suit them.

• Southeast — wealth. Keep it clear, well lit and free of storage. A healthy plant, a piece of brass or a small water feature works here. Do not put a bin or a washing machine in it.
• North — career and knowledge. Traditionally the position for a study, a home office or a writing desk. Cool, quiet and light suits the water element it holds.
• Northeast — study and concentration. The quiet corner. A reading chair, a small desk, a lamp. Keep it free of clutter and of anything noisy.
• South — fame and visibility. Traditionally where you display awards, certificates and photographs. Good for a living room, a display shelf or the front of a home office.
• Southwest — relationships and support. Traditionally the position for the head of the household, and the natural home for a main bedroom in many layouts.
• West — joy and sociability. Dining, entertaining, conversation. A dining table or a seating group works well here.
• Northwest — authority and the patriarch. Traditionally the father's position. A master bedroom or the study of the head of the household.
• East and southeast — growth. Good for a child's bedroom, a study, or a workspace, because wood element supports beginnings.

Two cautions

First, these are traditional assignments, not laws — a home that works well against them can be perfectly good. Second, the bagua tells you about the house. To know which directions are good for you, you need the personal layer, which comes from your kua number and is covered in our guide to the eight mansions.

The Bagua in Practice: Three Worked Examples

Here is how the same grid reads differently across three common homes, using the rule that the wealth position sits 45 degrees clockwise from the facing direction.

South-facing terrace

Facing south. The wealth position is the southeast, the love position is the east, the fame position is the south. The north, being the opposite of the fire direction, is the hardest corner in the house — a north-facing study there needs a wood or earth accent to compensate. Most south-facing homes feel warmest and brightest at the front, which is exactly what the element map predicts.

North-facing flat

Facing north. The wealth position becomes the northeast, the study position the north, and the fame position the east. The south — normally the brightest, most sociable corner — is now opposite the facing direction and is the most difficult to work with. Practitioners often compensate with strong artificial lighting and fire-element accents there. Our guide to feng shui and home design covers how light and colour handle this.

East-facing house

Facing east. The wealth position is the south, the love position the southeast, the fame position the north. The east, the facing direction itself, is the most yang position in the house and usually reads well for a main entrance or a breakfast room. Wood energy is strongest here, so metal and heavy objects tend to need balancing.

Common Mistakes With the Bagua

Four errors account for most of the bad bagua advice on the internet.

1. Rotating the diagram to suit the drawing. The bagua is a compass diagram. If a chart has 'north' at the top-left because it looked better on the page, it is wrong.
2. Treating the trigrams as decorations. A trigram painted on a wall does not make a room a study. The bagua is a reading tool.
3. Using the Later Heaven bagua for siting. The Earlier Heaven arrangement is for cosmological and feng shui-ying-yang studies, not for mapping a building's corners.
4. Confusing the bagua with the eight mansions. The bagua is a map of the house and is the same for everyone living in it. The eight mansions is a map of the person — your kua number tells you which of those eight palaces happens to be auspicious for you.

Getting the details right

For the tool versions of both, use the bagua home map to see what each palace governs, and the luopan direction finder to convert a compass bearing into its palace, element and colours. For the flying star layer that sits on top of the same grid, see our guide to flying star feng shui.