Vastu for a new house — the first five questions we ask

Most Vastu advice arrives after the house is built and consists of things to move: the bed, the mirror, the water tank. We do that work too, and it helps. But the houses that need the least moving are the ones where five questions were asked before the plan was drawn. Here they are, in the order we ask them.

1. Which way does the plot face?

Not the front door — the plot. A plot’s facing is the side its main road lies on, and it sets the whole grammar of the house. East- and north-facing plots are the easiest to build well on; south and west can be excellent but need the entrance placed with care. If you are still choosing between plots, this is the one thing worth choosing for.

2. Is the plot square?

Or near enough. Vastu’s map of a site — the vāstu-puruṣa maṇḍala — is a square divided into nine by nine, and every direction has a keeper. A rectangle is fine. An L-shape, a plot with a cut corner, a wedge that widens toward the road — each of these leaves a direction short, and the direction that is short will be the part of the family’s life that feels short. This can be corrected, but it is far cheaper to correct on paper than in brick.

3. Where is the water, and where is the fire?

The two things a house must contain and must keep apart. Water — the bore, the underground tank, the bathrooms’ drainage — belongs in the north-east, the direction of Īśāna, the lightest quarter. Fire — the kitchen, the electrical panel, the inverter — belongs in the south-east, Agni’s quarter. A kitchen in the north-east is the single most common thing we are asked to fix in Ludhiana’s older houses, and the single hardest.

4. What is heaviest, and where?

Mass belongs in the south and the west. The overhead tank, the staircase, the store, the thickest wall — put them where the maṇḍala can carry them. Keep the north and east open, low and light: the courtyard, the garden, the windows. A house whose weight sits in the wrong corner feels wrong to live in long before anyone can say why.

5. Where does the family sleep?

The master bedroom in the south-west — the heaviest, most settled quarter — with the head of the bed to the south or east. Children in the west or north-west. Guests in the north-west, where the air moves; they are meant to come and go. This is the question people expect a Vastu consultant to start with, and it is the last one we ask, because it depends on the first four.

What a reading involves

Bring the plot plan, or the building plan if it already exists, with north marked. We measure the facing, lay the maṇḍala over it, and go quarter by quarter. What comes back is a marked plan and a short list — what to keep, what to move, what to build differently — in the order it matters.

For a house that is already standing, the list is honest about what cannot be changed. A kitchen cannot always move. A door can. A colour, a mirror, a plant, a lamp — these are small things, and Vastu has always used small things when large ones were not available. What we will not do is tell you to knock down a wall to satisfy a rule that a lamp would satisfy.

Buildings have charts too. Ask before you draw the plan, and the chart will be an easy one.