How to Judge Which Way a Home Faces: Daylight and Feng Shui, Two Viewpoints
The first time I bought a home I spent a whole day viewing flats, and when I got home I realised I could not say which way a single one of them faced.
All the agent ever said was "this orientation is good"; nobody told me how to judge it.
A Phone Is Enough to Judge Orientation
One, open the compass app that comes with your phone.
Two, stand at the main window of the living room (that is, the daylight face) with the back of the phone pointing outwards.
Three, the direction it reads is the main orientation of that home.
A few rules of thumb: when the main daylight face points south or south-east, the sunlight is usually steady; a west-facing home gets hammered by the sun in the afternoon, most obviously in summer; a north-facing room gets little sun and is colder in winter. Whether anything outside the wall blocks the light, how high the floor is and how big the window is will all change the actual feel, so a compass only gives you a general direction — when you go to see a home, it is best to visit once in the morning and once in the afternoon.
Why "Sitting North, Facing South" Keeps Coming Up
Because it genuinely has something going for it on daylight and ventilation. Most of China sits at mid-latitudes in the northern hemisphere, so a south-facing window catches lower, more slanted sunlight in winter, while in summer the sun is high and shines in less directly.
The traditional emphasis on a home's orientation was one of the earliest parts of Feng Shui to take shape; the yang dwelling (the house people live in) and the yin dwelling (burial grounds) are also the most basic pair of distinctions in Feng Shui (sources 1 and 2).
Orientation in Feng Shui and Orientation for Daylight
One thing needs saying clearly: these two are not entirely the same thing.
Daylight looks at the windows. Orientation in the Feng Shui sense usually looks at the "sitting" and the "facing" of the building as a whole, taking a bearing with a compass at the door or at the main air inlet (Source 2).
So this situation does arise: a home whose windows face south and whose daylight is excellent, yet in the Feng Shui sense its "facing" is not necessarily south.
When I run into this kind of question, I make a habit of asking first what the person actually cares about. If it is living comfortably, then look at daylight, ventilation and noise. If it is orientation in the Feng Shui sense, then you have to take the bearing again by that system's rules. Mixing the two sets of conventions only makes the picture muddier the longer you look.
One Practical Suggestion
On the day you view a home, bring home one sentence that describes how it felt.
"At three in the afternoon the living room is bright enough that you do not need the lights, but the wall that takes the western sun is hot to the touch." A sentence like that is far more useful than the two words "good orientation". It is what you will actually meet every day from then on.
Orientation is only the beginning. What really decides whether you live comfortably is the moment the light comes in, the path the air takes through the rooms, and the first thing you see when you come home.
Tools on this site (for entertainment)
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This article was last checked on 19 September 2026. Traditional divination has many schools and a long history, and their formulas and versions do not fully agree; the text relies on publicly verifiable sources, and for dates and calendars please refer to the latest official publication.
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Sources
- "Feng Shui" (《风水学》) — Wikipedia: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/风水学 (accessed 19 September 2026)
- "Yang Zhai" (《阳宅》) — Wikipedia (the difference between the yang dwelling and the yin dwelling): https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/阳宅 (accessed 19 September 2026)
- Method page on this site: Residential Feng Shui: https://zhanbumizhi.top/en/methods/residential (accessed 19 September 2026)