Balancing the direction and elements which are represented by different colors, are all key elements of using Feng shui colors for east facing bathrooms.
Choosing the right color for your east facing bathrooms is an important task, as it can alter the entire look and feel of the space.
However, according to feng shui principles, the colors you choose for this space can also have an effect on the energies and different elements within this room.
The direction of a room is an important factor in the feng shui design, and each direction has a different element, color and meaning which all need to be balanced.
There are different color options to improve the effects of auspicious energies in this room and minimize the bad energy, to ensure that your bathroom is balanced.
Color and feng shui
If you want to start decorating, the color scheme in your bathroom is often one of the first and most important considerations.
Color is all around us, and it can have a significant impact on the look and feel of a certain space within your home, but there is more to color design than just aesthetics.
One of the ways you can approach the color you choose for your bathroom is feng shui.
Feng shui is an Ancient Chinese approach to decorating, which translates to “wind” (Feng) and “water” (Shui) and aims to improve the balance of different elements and energy within a space.
Many traditional feng shui practitioners often use a special feng shui compass, which is called a “Lo Pan” or “Luo Pan” to determine the exact direction of the rooms and walls of a house. Then a detailed map can be drawn of the feng shui in your house.
This is called a Bagua Chart, but if you do not have a “Luo Pan” nearby, knowing the facing directions of the rooms in your house, will be enough to determine the general feng shui colors, which should be favorable in different rooms.
Within feng shui, different colors represent the five essential elements: earth, metal, fire, water and wood.
It is believed that favorable colors in each direction can bring balance and harmony, while unfavorable colors can bring chaos and lower the energy of the space.
Governing colors in feng shui
Once you have investigated and determined the directions of your rooms, you can begin to implement the principles of feng shui for each direction and its corresponding element.
Feng shui relies heavily on the eight directions, namely: North, South, East, West, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest, and how these directions are governed by the elements.
These elements are represented through color and this is how color can be used to manage the elements in certain directions.
These principles seem complicated, but as soon as you break down which directions are governed by which elements and in turn which color represented a certain element, the whole system becomes easier to understand and can be summarized as follows:
The link between directions, elements and colors |
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| Direction | Element | Color | Meaning |
| North | Water | Blue, Black | Career luck |
| Northeast | Earth | Brown, Yellow, Pink | Education luck |
| East | Wood | Green | Health and family |
| Southeast | Wood | Green | Wealth |
| South | Fire | Red | Fame and status |
| Southwest | Earth | Brown, Yellow, Pink | Romance luck |
| West | Metal | White, Gold, Silver | Creativity and fertility |
| Northwest | Metal | White, Gold, Silver | Travel luck and assistance from other people |
Once you have a good understanding of the elements, directions, colors and meanings of each, it is also important to know that there are also different cycles when these elements interact with each other.
There is a creative cycle, where wood would create fire for example, which means that wood would strengthen the element of fire if they are placed in the same room.
There is also a weakening and an exhaustive cycle. This is easier to understand when we look at each element individually:
Cycles between different feng shui elements |
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| Element | Creative Cycle | Weakening Cycle | Destructive Cycle |
| Fire | Earth | Wood | Metal |
| Earth | Metal | Fire | Water |
| Metal | Water | Earth | Wood |
| Water | Wood | Metal | Fire |
| Wood | Fire | Water | Earth |
When the elements of both of these tables are combined, it is easy to see how one can enhance or minimize the effects of certain elements within a room, using the color which corresponds with that element and the direction of the room.
Using Feng shui colors in the east facing bathrooms
As mentioned above, rooms in the east direction of your house are governed by the wood element and are connected to the family and health aspects of the home.
This means that an east facing bathroom and especially a toilet in the east direction will have very bad wood energy.
Bad energy in this direction is believed to have a negative impact on your physical and mental health, and you will have to manage this bad energy using different weakening and destructive colors in that room.
When combining this knowledge with the cycles between the elements, it becomes clear that using colors that bring in the fire element, like reds and oranges, will weaken the effects of the wood element.
It is also important to remember that feng shui is about trying to balance all five of the elements, so using destructive elements like metals in this room, may be too strong and remove the wood element from this room completely.
This will disrupt the balance of the room and may not be effective. Bathrooms in an east direction can be quite tricky to balance within feng shui.
There is a lot of negative wood energy and a lot of water energy within the bathroom, which need to be balanced with the other elements or they can have a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of the family in the house.
Feng shui colors and elements for east facing bathrooms
By now, it should be clear that colors are used to represent the different elements within feng shui and can also be used to maximize auspicious elements and minimize the effects of certain inauspicious elements in different directions.
However, color alone cannot activate a certain element in a room, color can only be used to strengthen and remind you of that color.
In order for an element to be activated, it needs to be added to the room, for example, adding a lucky bamboo to a bathroom can activate the wood element.
Green is often used to represent wood, which governs the east direction. This means that green can also be used in east facing bathrooms.
Within feng shui, the color green often represents growth and new beginnings, which is why it is a good idea to add it to your bathroom.
The bathroom is one of the first three rooms which you visit in the mornings, which makes it important to the feng shui of your home, because this will mean that you start out each day fresh and energized for the new day which lies ahead.
Green is also a very calming color, which can help to make your bathroom look and feel like a spa.
Light greens are seen as yin colors. Using these lighter yin colors can help to balance out the inauspicious effect of wastewater, which has negative energy.
Other tips for good feng shui within your bathroom
Finding the balance between different feng shui elements and the direction which your bathroom is facing can be difficult, but there are several different tips and tricks which can help you to keep the energy in this room of your house balanced.
Blue and black colors are used to represent the water element, but within the bathroom, wastewater can carry bad energy and therefore these shades should be limited to only accent colors, as this will help you to avoid accidentally reinforcing bad energy.
It is also good to remember that within feng shui, mirrors help to distribute the energy of what they reflect around the room. Thus, to avoid spreading bad energy, your bathroom mirror should never reflect the toilet.
In order to minimize negative energy within your bathroom, it is important to keep your bathroom exceptionally clean.
Too much clutter can also inhibit the flow of energy within your room and therefore, finding smart storage solutions to keep your bathroom clutter free is key.
The best way to ensure good feng shui within any room is to make the room look beautiful. As long as there is a balance of the elements, taking care of the space, will amplify the effects of that space within your house and life.
Conclusion
Taking all of the different directions, elements and colors which represent each of these elements into account can seem overwhelming, but there are several ways to ensure a balance of elements and energies in your east facing bathroom.
The feng shui design dictates several colors to help minimize negative wood energy in the east direction and ensure that your health and family have auspicious energy.
Using fire elements, green colors, only small elements of black and blue and other helpful tips can all help you to achieve a good balance of energies within your east facing bathroom.
