With old buildings, styles of renovation and general architecture, many European apartments and houses represent a list of Feng Shui challenges! The ideal Feng Shui apartments are square in floor plan with no steep staircases, strange corners or floor plans. Having rented and owned a range of apartments in Europe, it is interesting to match Feng Shui practices with European structure. As with most issues, there is a Feng Shui solution.
Front Door
We would all love a meandering path to the front door but many of us have our key entrance on a street with no foyer area and enter bang, smack in to the main room. Or you open the front door and see a dark corridor with rooms either side. The trick is to measure the Chi flow and energy. Check how you feel when you walk off the street, look at the surroundings. We have rejected apartments based on bins and messy streets, damaged entrances and a sense of too much or too little energy close by. Most of it is common sense about what you notice that doesn’t suit your lifestyle – the betting shop across the road, the entrance blocked with bikes, shoes and other apartment’s stuff or even the lack of light in the street. Equally, there have been buildings with a stark sense of quiet and that may suit some but not all.
Often, people improve buildings and if you can be a good neighbour, go ahead. Our Berlin apartment has many renters and several absent landlords/ladies. When we arrived we noticed the major building door had a cracked glass panel and the lock was frequently damaged as people moved in and out. Thankfully, the door has been recently replaced with new wood and glass panels and the lock works – it has made a big difference. Our French door is fine but opens to an old tiled corridor that could do with some work – we have already replaced two communal lightbulbs.
Steep Staircases
Opening the front door and immediately facing a steep staircase is often a European feature. This is a key Feng Shui challenge as Chi energy is said to race up and down the stairs, missing key Bagua areas of the space and racing back out of the door, not knowing how to settle or where to go. A solution is to slow down the energy, place small battery operated lamps on key steps, hang lovely art work to catch the eye, place a key piece of furniture, a pot, statue, artwork at the top of the staircase to catch the attention and stop people rushing up and down.
Missing Bagua Sectors
There is likely to be at least one sector missing and possibly placed in the staircase of the whole building. First, work out which sector is missing and how this affects your life. Balconies also can provide a challenge as they often sit outside of the Bagua map. A key solution is to purchase tiny mirrors and place a mirror on the wall where the missing space is stating the following, ‘this expands the wall out so there is no missing space’.
Mezzanine Rooms
I am not a fan of this new trend as it is often means the owner has had a bedroom built in the ceiling space and is including that in the current or future real estate price. It is like having a space hanging over you with a lack of solid walls that are common sense. There are Feng Shui books specifically on this topic, most state that it is not ideal to have a bedroom over a kitchen especially if the energy of an oven is near the above bedhead. Equally, bedrooms over a garage can be seen to have inactive energy or clutter below. We recently saw a bathroom as part of a mezzanine with only a small half wall between the bedhead and the toilet! There are solutions but consider other options if possible.
