What Color Should I Paint My Bedroom?
This is a very common question and my clients ask me all the time.
So what is the right color? What if I tell you there is no such thing as an absolutely correct answer?
The truth is that there isn’t a one correct answer. There are in fact many and all of them are correct – as least from the viewpoint of the practitioner who prescribe it.
Let me explain.
There are many ways or ‘system’ to select the right color for the bedroom. Some practitioners based their choice of colors on the personal gua.
For example if your gua number is 2 or 5 – earth element – the best color for the bedroom is yellow. If you gua is 6 or 7 – metal element – then white is preferred (if you wish you can use gold or silver). If it is 3 or 4 – wood element – then green is good. Finally you can use red color (pink is more practical) if your gua number is 9 – fire element – or blue if your gua number is 1 – water element.
Some other based their choice of color for the bedroom on the ‘qi’ that affects the area. For example a Flying Star practitioner might suggest blue, white or even yellow of a room with mountain star 1 (timely) and water star 6. You see the number one (1) star is of the water element. Blue color is water and is the same element as the mountain star. This is good. White is metal which produce water. This is good too. Finally yellow color (which symbolizes earth) produces the metal water star of 6 which in turn produces the water mountain star of 1. So yellow is good too.
Practitioners of the Eight Mansions House Gua system might suggest a color (or scheme) that considers the interplay between the elements of the wandering star that occupies the bedroom and the element of the sector. You get another color option here.
Practitioners that incorporate Ba Zi into their Feng Shui recommendations may base their choice of colors on the ‘yong shen’ or ‘useful god’ of the chart of the occupants. This is usually – but not necessarily – the most lacking element in the chart.
Then there are practitioners who do not believe that colors matters. You get no help from them in this aspect.
Finally there are those, who prefer not to use colors at all. Instead they prefer to use physical items that represent the elements e.g. wind chime when a metal element is required or a jar of water when the water element is required.
In my practice I do not suggest colors unless my clients ask me for my advice. When they do, I normally use a couple of methods – Ba Zi and Flying Star – to select a set of optimal colors for them. You see sometimes there are conflicts. A good color choice based on the Flying Star may be bad from a Ba Zi perspective and vice versa. The trick is to find a color that is good – or at least acceptable – from both the systems.
You may have noticed that I use the phrase ‘select a set of optimal color’. Why a set instead of just one? In many cases, I have to work with interior designers and the last thing that I want is to suggest one out of whack color and having the interior designer label me ‘color challenged’. Just kidding!
Actually the main reason is that I like to give the interior designer more room to exercise their creativity. I fully subscribe to the belief that Feng Shui Consultants should not try to play the role of interior designer unless they have this gift of design.
The other reason is my suspicion that colors play a very small role in the overall Feng Shui of the house. As long as you do not use a wrong color e.g. red in a 2-5 room, it is alright.
I would suggest instead, to pay more attention to the surrounding forms, the location of the main door, kitchen and bedrooms, the orientation of the main door, stove and beds as well as observing Feng Shui best practices thorough the dwelling.
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