Most Feng Shui text tells us that the location (and the orientation) of the main door, master bedroom (and orientation of the bed) and kitchen (plus the stove, of course) are very important. They must be located in the right sectors of the house and orientated correctly.

So what is the problem? The problem is a lot of people are confused about sector and orientation. And I hope to clear this up in this article.

There are two methods to demarcate sectors within a house depending on which school you come from. They are the eight pies method and the nine palaces method. In the article I will use the nine palaces methods to show the differences between sectors and orientation.

A house can have one of eight possible facing. They are north, south, east, west, north-east, south-east, south-west and northwest. Each facing occupies a span of 45 degrees.

For example, when the facing direction is anywhere between 337.5 and 22.5 degrees, the house is considered to be facing north. Similarly when the facing direction is between 157.5 and 202.5 degrees, the house is considered to be facing south. I believe that you can work out the span of the other facing directions.

Let’s look at the example of a house with a facing of say 183 degrees. It is clearly a south facing house. In figure 1 below, the main door of the house is located in the south east (SE) sector. In figure 2, the main door is located in the south (S) sector while in figure 3 it is in the south-west (SW) sector of the house.

Please note that all the doors are facing south.

Let’s consider more examples.

In figure 4, the main door is located in the south east (SE) sector and facing east. In figure 5 the main door is located in south (S) sector but facing south (S). Finally in figure 6 the main door is now located in the south-west sector but facing west (W).

I hope this clears any confusion that you may have on sectors and facing!