How to Feng Shui your Home Office to become more productive

Working from home is a privilege that many people have been enjoying lately. It all starts with setting up your home office in a way that you feel comfortable and motivated to work. I will show you how to apply some Feng Shui principles to your home office to turn it into a pleasant and pretty space where you will become more focused and productive.

Having the freedom to organize your personal and professional schedule is now seen as a sign of success and a path for a less stressed life. However many of us start working without paying too much attention to where we’re doing it.

There are some easy Feng Shui tips to make your home office pretty and will energize the space where you should be very productive.

Here is the thing:

Working in a pretty office makes you feel good, right from the start of your day, when you sit at your desk to work in the morning. It is always a pleasure to be surrounded by a beautiful environment.

How to Feng Shui Your Home Office and Become More Productive

There are lots of ways to improve the environment in which you work with some Feng Shui principles. If you’re working from home you will have even more freedom to make your decor choices. As fun as it is to pick furniture, accents, and decor style for your office, it is a great idea to incorporate Feng Shui basic concepts to make sure your productive energy is lined up with the flow of “chi”.

1- How to choose the space for your Home Office according to the flow of “chi”

Chi, in Feng Shui, refers to the universal energy or the energy that permeates everything around us. It also applies to the energy inside your body, as well as the energy inside and outside any man-made structures.

According to Laura Morris, interior designer, and Feng Shui consultant”, to have strong chi is to have a strong life force and vitality.

It means that you are able to move easily and freely, and you have an energetic resistance to negative forces and situations that could comprise your health and wellbeing.

You have created a protective source of stamina, confidence, and capability. To strengthen our life force, we need to improve the quality and amount of positive energy in our environment.”

Cultivating vital chi in your environment is the starting point. It is difficult to activate and promote change in your life until you improve the chi that is already in your home.

By working at home, you’re adding a layer of energy to your home that has to be alive, clean, vibrant, successful, and creative.

In your home office, you want to make sure you get enough vibrant chi to support successful productivity. As we all know it is not so easy to be as productive working from home as it when you go out to an office. Many interferences happen and controlling the home environment can be a challenge.

The chi of a space

Feng Shui focus on nurturing the chi of the earth. This is the chi of nature and our surroundings, the environments we live in, and the spaces we create.

Ideally, we would choose our homes, lots, and residences by examining the flow and quality of the chi in the area. Then we would adjust and enhance the environments we’re living in to get the best flow of energy: the kind of energy that makes us feel physically supported by our homes.

The chi of the body

Personal chi is the energy that flows through an individual. It is expressed through physical qualities, as well as in mental states such as thoughts and emotions.

How you walk, talk and express yourself in the world is influenced by your life force. Many things can impact our individual’s chi: events, situations, and environments, and cause imbalance.

According to this Feng Shui concept, we should always strive for balance in the spaces we live in and in our personal chi. Our own chi should flow smoothly and without resistance through all the meridians of the body.

One example of finding this balance is by avoiding having a home office in your bedroom. The Chi in the bedroom should be soothing, calm, restful, while the Chi of your workspace should be more vibrant and active.

If you have no other option, use a space divider such as a screen to separate the two energies and help you achieve the right balance. Learn more about how Intuitive Feng Shui can improve your life in your bedroom here.

1- Start with Feng Shui Office Basic concepts

Those concepts are basic Feng Shui principles for any ambient. It addresses the furniture position, how natural light is coming in the room, which materials should be picked for accessories, etc. Read more about it here.

Basic Feng Shui Office Layout

Avoid sharp edges. Pick desks or chairs with curved edges.
Choose furniture that speaks of prosperity and success.
Remove all clutter from your office.
Your chair should be placed in a powerful or commanding position. It symbolizes the ability to see opportunity as it comes through your career. The chair should always face the door.
Choose artwork that will keep you inspired. Include some of your favorite sayings or quotes to support healthy, positive energy.

2- Define the type of work that you do from your home office

Photo by Martha O’Hara Interiors – Search home office design ideas

What kind of work do you do from your home office? Is it analytical, managerial and social, technical, or creative? The design of your office, including the shapes and colours around you, should facilitate the kind of mental work you’re doing all day long.

Feng Shui for Wealth and Prosperity

Here are a few examples of how to select the right decorative item to give you the ch’i energy you need.

- Do you need to remain alert? Try adding a metal accent piece such as a picture frame or pen organizer to gain the powers of logic and the mind.

- Do you need to develop leadership skills? Add the element of fire to your space. You can add it literally with decorative candles or an electric fireplace, or symbolically with red or orange accent pieces.
- Do you need to relax? Try adding a flowing water sculpture. The energy of water will improve creative thinking while its sound will calm you.

3- Balance Your Office Design With the Five Elemental Forces

In Feng Shui, there are four directions and five elemental forces of nature: metal, earth, fire, wood, and water.

Each of these elements has its own related colour and its own energy:

- Metal (white or grey): Mental clarity, logic, and critical thinking skills.

- Earth (light brown or light yellow): Strength, grounding, stability, and tenacity.

- Fire (red, yellow, orange, purple, and pink): Leadership, boldness, self-expression, and self-esteem.

- Wood (green and brown): Growth, flexibility, and the ability to adapt to change.
- Water (blue and black): Creativity, inspiration, wisdom, and insight.

According to the core of the work you do, try to incorporate colors and materials that will be more favorable to the activity.

For example, grey shades in the walls may facilitate a more logical work scope like technical projects, accounting, technology, and software development.

On the other hand, if you’re a creative artist, bold colours like orange and yellow could add a level of energy that will facilitate self-expression and boldness.

Photo by Soledad Builders, LLC – Look for home office design inspiration

4- Play with the Beauty of Energy and Shapes

As you decorate with Feng Shui, notice how different items make you feel. By implementing Feng Shui practices, your workday should start to run smoother.

Remember that, though functionally it may feel quite separate, your home office is still a part of your home, and should give you a feeling of order and peace.

You can take these principles further by adding shapes that represent the elemental energies your space needs. Not only will this bring good ch’i, but lovely shapes can please your aesthetic senses.

- Metal: Round

- Earth: Square

- Fire: Triangular

- Wood: Rectangular
- Water: Wavy

For example, say you want your home office to help you to add stability to your life at home although you’re running a business from your home.

Feng Shui can help you mentally and spiritually prepare for these challenges by adding the element of earth to your home office. Try adding a light brown or light yellow table to your space, and to optimize the earth’s energy, get one that is square in shape.

When you look at decorative pieces be sure to pay attention to shapes.

Wavy-patterned drapes or blinds can add the creative element of water as you daydream and gaze out the window.

A rounded coffee mug can heighten your mental clarity with the energy of metal.

The shapes around you should be in harmony with the colors you have selected, and you can remove items that disrupt the elemental chi energy (such as wavy metal or triangular wooden objects).

5- Customize Your Home Office for the Ways You Work and Live

The layout of your office and the items you choose can be an expression of your personality and the spiritual energies you connect with. By applying these Feng Shui design principles, your beautiful, newly organized space will help improve your productivity and efficiency.

Nothing like being surrounded by pretty things in a nice environment to get motivated to work even harder!