A feng shui classroom layout helps the teacher and students optimize the benefits of auspicious chi energy. With a feng shui classroom layout, you can prevent common issues of student restlessness, rowdiness, and inattentiveness.
Entrance for Feng Shui Classroom Layout
The entrance to a feng shui classroom needs to provide a clear pathway for students to move in and out of the room. Just as you wouldn't block the main entrance to your home, you don't want to block the entrance into your classroom.
Allow the Chi Energy to Flow
The feng shui classroom goal is to create a layout that allows the chi energy to flow about your classroom like a slow, lazy stream. Anything that blocks this flow will cause it to be dammed up and become stagnant.
Yin Yang and Transition From Hallways Into Classroom
You want the transition from the busy hallway (yang energy) to be easy and natural. In a school setting, this means the students will leave the hallway (yang) and step inside your classroom (yin). The entry way should be inviting and pleasing to encourage the students to venture farther inside.
Light Up the Doorway
The ideal for a feng shui entrance is to have a light beside the door. If this isn't possible, you may want to place a tall plant to one side of the door and string miniature lights through it. Just be sure you set the plant far enough from the entrance that no students will be bumping into it or having to sidestep it.
Teacher's Desk Placement
As the teacher, you need to place your desk, so you have command of the room. This means you should place your desk where you can see the classroom door and all who enter.
Place Teacher's Desk Diagonally Opposite Door
The ideal feng shui desk placement is diagonally opposite your classroom door. This placement provides clear sight of all who come and go.
Solution for Difficult Placement of Teacher's Desk
If you can't place your desk diagonally from the door and must place it either facing the door or sideways in line with the door. You need to create a barrier to prevent the chi energy from rushing toward you.
Avoid Teacher's Desk Placement Across From Door
However, you don't want to sit directly across from the door since the chi energy will be constantly blasting into you. When chi energy rushes toward you on a consistent basis, you feel drained and suffer from unrelenting stress.
Solution for Desk Directly Across From Door
If you must place your desk directly across from the door, hang a small multi-faceted round crystal orb between you and the doorway. This is an effective and a discreet cure. You can then place plants on the floor or on the front of your desk. Avoid plants with pointy leaves since these create poison arrows.
Don't Place Teacher's Desk in Line of Door
You don't want to sit with your desk in line with the door so you are constantly blind-sighted by anyone walking into your classroom. No one should be able to enter and stand to the side or behind your desk. Your desk should be between you and anyone coming into your classroom. This keeps you in the command position and in control of the room.
Solution for Desk Aligned With Door
You can place a two- to three-foot tall floor plant at the end of your desk that is facing the door. This creates a barrier between you and the door and deflects the chi energy from rushing toward you.
Solid Wall Behind Your Chair
You also want to have a solid wall behind your desk. In feng shui, this means you will have strong support for your work. If you sit with your back to a door or window, you won't feel confident in your work. You won't have the support you need, and there is a risk of being stabbed in the back.
Solutions for Windows or Door Behind Desk
If you can't move your desk so there is a solid wall behind you, then place a privacy screen behind your desk. Don't use one that folds and creates sharp corners (poison arrows). You will feel the difference the moment you place the screen behind you.
Type of Teacher Desk
The ideal desk for a teacher is one with rounded corners or kidney shaped. A desk that is too small won't support your work and won't allow you to grow in your career.
Teacher Desk Chair
The ideal feng shui desk chair is one with a high back. This is especially important if you must sit with your back to a window.
Feng Shui Layout for Student Desks
While you don't want your students sitting with their backs to the classroom door, you should never sacrifice your command position. You can arrange the student desks so they can still view the classroom door in a command position, even if it isn't an ideal view. You want all the students to be facing the teacher.
Student Desk Arrangements to Avoid
None of your students should sit directly opposite the door. Those in the path of chi entering the classroom will have a difficult time concentrating and their schoolwork will suffer.
Don't Place Students Facing Each Other:
The worst arrangement for student desks is four desks shoved together to create a square. This placement forces two pairs of students to work facing each other. In feng shui, this is considered a conflict arrangement that pits the students against each other.
Avoid Odd Angle Layouts for Student Desks
You may think the bagua octagon shape is a good student desk layout with the teacher at the top of the octagon. However, the octagon layout creates poison arrows with the desks being at odd angles unless the desks have rounded corners. A second problem is the two angled sides of the bagua from the teacher's position at the top of the octagon. The student desks along these two lines end up challenging the teacher's command position from each side and create a straight line of chi energy to blast the teacher in a poison arrow effect.
Curved Arc Layout for Feng Shui Student Desks Placement
You are better off using a one-third arc of a circle to avoid placing students directly across from each other. You can then have the desks lined up in rows. To avoid creating chutes of chi energy, you can offset each row similar to how brick are laid. This means the second row of desks will alternate so they fall behind the first row of spaces. The third row will follow the same pattern and so on.
Allow Chi Energy to Flow Around Student Desks
Row layouts need enough space between the student desks for the chi energy to maneuver around them. This type of placement allows the students to benefit from auspicious chi energy moving all around them all day. It's best to avoid student desk placements that create chutes of straight lines forcing the chi to rush past the students.
Feng Shui Classroom Color Ideas
You can use the feng shui colors associated with elements to infuse specific energies into your classroom. The ideal colors for a classroom are the calming energies of green (wood element) and blue (water element). Blue colors are inspiring and stimulate creativity. Green colors comfort and provide a relaxed atmosphere for students to explore and venture into unchartered waters while feeling safe and secure.
Feng Shui Elements and Colors
The fire element brings energetic colors of red, purple, orange, and pink to your classroom color palette. You can use these colors in classroom areas where a little more energy is needed to inspire creativity and student participation.
Way to Use Color in Younger Students
There are several ways you can use color in your classroom for younger students. Brighter values of each color can be used with a few darker values. White walls are mundane and give a classroom an unwanted sterile feeling.
Accent Walls for Specific Activities
You can use more than one color on your walls. For example, a medium green is a good choice for a rest area or reading space. A vibrant blue is good for an arts and crafts area. Color selection can also play a role when it comes to selecting furniture, mats/rugs, toys, and posters.
Choosing Classroom Colors for Older Students
For more mature students, such as junior high and high school age, you can use deeper colors than those used for younger students. For example, you may choose medium to dark browns that represent the earth element. This element can serve to ground students and give them a sense of stability in their studies. You can add splashes of black that represent deep water for the water element. This feng shui color stimulates and adds depth to the mental processes. With a good balance of greens and blues, you can create an inviting and creative environment for your students.
Avoid Clutter and Organize School Supplies
In feng shui, clutter creates stagnation. To avoid having walls of clutter, designate the south wall of your classroom for students' works. The south sector of your classroom is the recognition and fame arena. This makes the south wall an ideal location to let your students' show off their work.
Be Tidy and Clean
The key to good chi energy is keeping an area uncluttered with everything in its place. You can train students to return books, art supplies and other learning aids to their rightful place once they are finished using them. Cabinets are a great way to make a room look neat and organized, make sure you have enough bins to keep all cabinets organized and uncluttered.
Solving Specific Problems in a Classroom
Few classrooms are going to be free of issues that challenge feng shui principles. Armed with a few remedies, you can ensure your classroom percolates along with good chi energy.
Bookshelves and Feng Shui
Feng shui principles advise avoiding open bookshelves unless you position the books even with the edge of the shelf to prevent poison arrows. Trying to maintain bookshelves with students taking books off the shelves and replacing them is an impossible task. You can either stick the bookshelf in a corner where no one sits, or you can opt for a bookcase with glass or solid doors to solve the poison arrow problem.
Window Directly Across From Door
When a door and window are lined up across from each other, the chi energy rushes through the door and out the window. Your classroom doesn't receive any of the beneficial chi energy. You can slow down and deter this rush of chi with a few quick remedies.
- Suspend a multi-faceted crystal sphere between the door and window.
- Place plants along the window windowsill.
- Keep the window blinds closed.
- If you don't have binds and can't install them, tape light weight white paper over the windows or cover with a poster.
- You can distract and attract chi energy deeper into your classroom with lamps (leave on at least five hours each day.)
Keep Chi Energy Flowing in Your Classroom
If you have windows in your classroom that aren't directly across from the door, you should open them during good weather to allow fresh chi energy to enter. A small oscillating fan keeps the chi energy flowing. Add a six-rod hollow metal windchime so the fan causes it to occasionally chime. Place an aquarium in the southeast sector of your classroom to generate auspicious chi energy.
Windowless Classroom
You can compensate for a mundane windowless classroom by painting the wall a light green or blue. Color adds depth and distracts from the lack of windows.
- Add a forest or soothing slow moving stream wall mural or posters on one wall.
- Avoid using pictures, photos, mural, or posters of violent ocean scenes, fierce animals, or battlescenes. These create inauspicious chi energy.
- Use colored cabinets and storage units.
- Add lamps in the corners so the light reflects up the walls, such as a torchiere lamp.
- Table lamps create a homey atmosphere.
- Use a flatscreen tv on the wall to play a nature scene during the day.
- Place colored mats/rugs to designate work areas.
- Round tables are good choices for collaborative work spaces.
- String miniature lights along the top of the wall to attract invigorating chi energy.
Beneficial Feng Shui Classroom Layout Ideas
You can take advantage of feng shui principles to create a dynamic atmosphere for learning. Feng shui classroom layout ideas help return the control of the classroom back to the teacher.
