House Facing Direction Finder

Facing and sitting

In classical feng shui every building has a facing direction — the side that meets the street, light and activity, usually the side with the main entrance — and a sitting direction directly behind it. Both Eight Mansions and Flying Star feng shui start from this pair, so getting it right matters more than any other measurement.

The front door and the facing are usually the same, but not always. A house whose door is on a side wall still normally faces the street. If the two disagree, most practitioners take the facing from the building's front elevation.

Why the map reading is corrected

A map is drawn to true north, the direction of the North Pole. A compass — including a traditional luo pan — points to magnetic north, which can be more than 15° away depending on where you are. Feng shui directions have always been read from a magnetic compass, so this tool converts the map bearing using the World Magnetic Model (WMM2025) for your exact location and today's date.

The difference is large in much of North America: around 12° west of true north in New York, and around 11–15° east of it on the West Coast. Without the correction, a house could easily land in the wrong 24-mountain sector, or even the wrong one of the eight directions.

The 24 mountains

The luo pan divides the circle into 24 sectors of 15°, called mountains (山). Each of the eight directions holds three of them; the middle one is centred exactly on the direction. North 2, called Zi (子), runs from 352.5° to 7.5°. Flying Star charts depend on which of the three sub-sectors a house faces, which is why this tool reports the mountain as well as the direction.

Prefer to measure on site? The phone compass reads the 24 mountains from your doorway, and the online luo pan works over a map or a floor plan. To look at roads, water and buildings around the house, use the surroundings check.

Eight Mansions house trigram

Eight Mansions names a house after its sitting direction. A house that sits North and faces South is a Kan house; one that sits Southwest is a Kun house, and so on. The house trigram gives the building its own set of four favorable sectors, which practitioners compare with the occupants' Kua numbers.

How accurate is it?

• The imagery. Satellite photos are corrected to the map, but tall buildings can lean in the picture. Use the base of the walls or the roof outline, not the shadow.
• Your line. Use the ↺/↻ buttons to fine-tune in half-degree steps. Zoom in as far as the imagery allows.
• The magnetic model. WMM2025 is accurate to well under a degree for most places. It doesn't account for local interference, but neither does a hand-held compass — which is usually worse, because of steel, cars and wiring nearby.
• Boundaries. If the result is within 1.5° of a mountain boundary, the tool tells you. Readings that close to a line are usually re-checked on site.

Questions