Tips for a Balanced Home

When designing your home interiors, it is important to create a well-balanced living environment. From your choice of furniture through to the type of flooring and wall colours you pick, combined with the many different lighting styles available, you can greatly affect the concept and mood you are trying to achieve. But having said that, infinite choices can sometimes boggle the mind, so here are six simple tips to ensure you don’t go too far wrong when attempting to create a balanced living environment in your home.

Balance your lighting concept & wall colours
The type of lights you use can greatly affect the atmosphere and ambience of your home. Too much light can create energy that is too yang and too fierce, while a home filled with dim lights can make the energy too yin. When dealing with lighting that is excessive, especially when natural daylight casts a blinding glare throughout the home, you can tone down the light by painting a wall section of the room a darker colour such as grey, blue or even dark red to absorb the excessive yang energy.

The use of colours on walls can also be effective in controlling inauspicious flying star combinations or even annual star afflictions. Red coloured walls symbolize silent fire energy and can be effective in controlling the argument star #3. Similarly, grey symbolizes metal energy and can be used to control the illness #2 or the Five Yellow. Gold coloured paint also makes a good metal cure.

For corners that are too dim or yin, enhance the energy with plenty of lamps or up-lights. Uplift the energy using a light coloured wall; this will enhance the lighting level, making the corner appear brighter than it is. By introducing yang energy into a yin corner, you redress the balance of the area.

Select the light fixture to suit the space
Do not simply place any old lamp in any old corner. Make it a point to specially select the right kind of light fixtures to use depending on the energy of the area and what you are trying to achieve.

In this example, the use of floor lamps and ceiling lights contradict each other’s intentions, resulting in extreme conditions. The harsh nature of the floor light creates unnecessary hard shadows, while the ambient lighting from the ceiling is too dim to do any good.

A combination of ceiling and wall washers can provide a simple solution to enhance any small confined space. This system not only helps improve your lighting ambiance but also helps deflect any wall protrusions that can be seen as poison arrows.

Watch out for poison arrows around the house
These can take on the form of exposed beams, wall corners or even exposed shelves. In most houses, one of the most basic poison arrows to watch out for are the stairs. Be sure to block the pathway of your stairs so that the staircase does not appear to be coming at you. And certainly do not have the staircase directly facing your front door. If your staircase is unfortunately located, create a partition wall to separate the stairs from the main living area, or from the path to the front door. Partitions can either be more permanent structures like concrete half walls, or even movable screens with auspicious motifs.

In the example here, the simple wall helps to create private and public areas within the living room, yet maintain the feeling of an open space plan. Similarly, the separation of the living and dining areas can be achieved through a simple low glass partition. This helps maintain the privacy of such areas without compromising the extensive space of the entire living room.

Enhance your garden to suit your paht chee self-element
Look at what element is missing or lacking in your Four Pillars chart. For those lacking water, it is ideal to create a water feature either as a pool or water feature in the garden to introduce water energy. This is ideal if your water star #8 is also located in this sector.

For wood energy, go for a greenery setup with plenty of grass and trees. Plants and shrubs are also great for enhancing the 1,4 and 4,1 star combinations. Earth energy can be introduced by creating a feature wall clad with granite or limestone. If your mountain star #8 is located in this sector, enhance further with bright lights. Enhance for fire energy through the use of garden bollard lights. Silent fire energy is essential if the sector is affected with the #3 argument star. Metal energy can be introduced through a white wash exterior fence and is useful to control the #5 misfortune star.

Enhance the luck of your house kua
The sitting direction of your house determines the element that governs it. The sitting direction is the opposite of your facing direction, so if your house faces North, it sits South. For South-sitting homes, fire is the ruling element, so it is best to use a wood floor concept to enhance the luck of the house. Avoid earth-based materials like marble or granite, which are exhaustive for a South home. For North homes (water element) enhance with metal energy such as white walls and metallic window and furniture treatments. For East and SE homes (wood element), enhance with water features or through the use of black and blue colours. This can be introduced through black granite or blue feature walls. West and NW (metal) homes require earth energy which can be achieved with white wash walls such as limestone or beige marble tones.

With SW and NE (earth) homes, use earth-coloured tones such as off-white walls or brown-based ceramic or marble tiles.

Create balance in your dining area through clever interior decorating
Introduce interior decorative features to help enhance the space of your living environment. Mirrors are extremely effective in creating space, especially around the dining area. The doubling effect helps to symbolize the doubling of food around the dining area, representing the ample nature of resources around the house.

Balance your environment through your soft furnishings. The secret of a well-balanced living space is to balance the yin and yang aspects of your soft furnishings. For a dining room example, the use of hard elements such as metal or granite tabletops may exhibit a monotone feel to the space. Soften the environment by introducing wood energy through the use of adjacent grass patios or plants. Break the hard monotony further through a nice selection of carpets to give a balanced base to your hard-finished dining set. This technique of material selections helps you highlight your dining area without creating a hostile energy inside the home.