Sun rises from the east and sets in the west. If you stand facing east, then on your right is south, on left is North and on your back is West.
Along with an accurate compass direction, determining your sitting and facing direction is critical to performing a precise Feng Shui consultation. We would estimate that 70% of people get this wrong.
This area causes so much confusion, we have been to so many consultations and told beforehand that a property faces a certain direction and when we get there the direction of the front door is totally different to the facing direction.
To give the answer is actually very hard, as there are so many different views on how to find the front direction of your home or office, in fact even a qualified Feng Shui consultant can spend some time analysing a property before she/he makes a decision on where the front is.
Forget your front door direction
Most people assume the front is the direction your front door faces, try and imagine you are in my home (while you are there can you do some ironing and dusting please) as you stand in the centre of my home you will be in my dining room with the living room and hallway and kitchen either side, I have five large windows and one small facing north, there is a road outside and a public footpath also my front garden, but I do not have a front door there. On the east wall I have a main door with porch and one window, which looks onto the next-door neighbours house.
Hopefully you will get the idea by now, because my front door faces east it does not mean this is the front of my home, my facing direction is north, this is where the most “Yang” (activity) energy is, the road, footpath, people and cars going by, the widest part of the building, if you were the architect designing my home from scratch you would definitely put my front door there. This part is very very important, as when you calculate any school of Feng Shui you need to know which way your property faces. If you take my house again (make sure you lift the ornaments and dust underneath) although I may have a driveway leading to the garage and front main door, for example assume at the back I now have a main road, pedestrian footpath, lots of people and activity and even a lovely stream, you guessed it, this would now be my front direction as this is where all my Yang energy is, this is not uncommon when you think about it, drive down any main road you will see many homes with back gardens facing the road and yet they will always think this is the rear in Feng Shui terms. This can be hard to judge even for the most seasoned Master especially if you are on the top floor of a block of flats or a large office building.