How to Feng Shui Your Kid’s Room

Feng Shui can improve sleep quality and relationships within the home. The idea of energy circulating your home may seem a little wacky, but many people would agree that particular shapes and colors do affect mood and behavior, and I consider Feng Shui as a way to pinpoint what will work in your home with your personal temperament. Today I’m explaining how to Feng Shui your kid’s room, although nearly all principles mentioned can be applied to grown-up bedrooms too. 

The Concept of Feng Shui

The age-old Chinese practice of Feng Shui may not be as far out as you think. For many, the first thing that comes to mind is reorientating furniture to face a designated direction, but in truth, it’s about a lot more than that. Feng Shui aims to create a calming yet inspiring environment, by considering how space is used and how energy may flow through it. Again, ‘energy‘ might sound a bit fluffy, but think about sight lines, how you move about and interact with objects, and how colors affect your mood. 

In order to create good Feng Shui, everything requires purpose. Carefully considering what you place and where you place it should create an uncluttered home inline with your own temperament, personality, and natural sense of style. 

How to Feng Shui Your Kid’s Room

All Feng Shui ideas can be applied to kid’s rooms, although there are some considerations which are unique to a child’s energy. For example, traditional Feng Shui would make the bed accessible from both sides, so energy (Chi) can freely flow around it. However, it is generally accepted that sleeping against a solid wall helps young children feel secure, which is usually considered more important overall. 

There are some general rules for how to bring good Feng Shui to your kid’s room before you start to consider personalizing it to your child’s personal energy. 

12 Ways to Bring Good Feng Shui to Your Kid’s Room

1. Remove clutter. A clutter-free bedroom promotes calm and healthy sleep.
2. Purify the air. Air purifying plants, opening a window when you can… quality air is everything.
3. Place the bed in the ‘Command Position’. The command position allows the best view of the door and the room, putting your child in ‘command’ of their surroundings. Place the bed away from the line of the door, ideally diagonally and furthest away from it.
4. Do not place the bed directly under a window or inline with a mirror. Both these placements reduce the security of the child, we all know what it’s like to catch a glimpse of something in the mirror and feel scared. Avoiding these positions may not be possible but is best practice. The command position generally takes priority over either of these considerations if you find you have a clash.
5. Choose a wooden bed frame with a solid headboard. Again, we return to a sense of security and comfort, so important in a child’s bedroom. A headboard in solid wood or padded upholstery is much more comfortable to sit up against, and therefore your child will feel safer in how they move around and sit in bed. Metal beds are much more prone to movement and squeaking, neither of which help the sleeper feel secure. 
6. Choose a bed frame that is raised from the ground, with no storage beneath. To create good Feng Shui you need to allow energy (Chi) to flow freely around you. By raising the bed and keeping the under bed space clear, Chi is free to flow, enhancing your child’s state of rest (no Montessori floor beds here). This also relates back to avoiding metal… some believe the conductive properties of metal interrupts the flow of Chi.
7. Choose a circular/rounded nightstand. Corners pointed in the direction of seating or beds is considered bad Feng Shui and even called ‘poison arrows’. These angles accumulate Chi and direct it outwards in your direction, not what you want for a quiet night’s sleep. Although we’re approaching far-out territory I would agree that no-one likes to be pointed at, and the position of harsh angles could well be a distraction.
8. Choose soft tones to decorate. Natural/skin/earth colors are generally considered good Feng Shui for bedrooms. However, a child may desire something a little more colorful and personalized for their space. Avoid bold primary colors or crazy wallpaper, overstimulation doesn’t help kids sleep. Stick to pastels and light bright colors, and personalize with accents in line with their birth element or the bagua of the house (see below).
9. Display family photographs and child’s artwork. Positive images of parents promote a sense of security while strengthening the parents’ position of authority in the household. Allowing children to choose and display their own drawings helps them take ownership of their space and encourages creativity.
10. Avoid imagery of wild animals or fighting. I appreciate your child might be really into sharks and Ninjago, but imagery of wild animals and aggressive behavior does not create a calming environment and good Feng Shui. 
11. Incorporate balanced lighting. Because Feng Shui is all about energy, lighting becomes very important. Find a healthy balance of dark (yin energy) and light (yang energy). Use a mix of lighting (natural light, fittings, lamps) to avoid dark corners and extreme shadows. Hanging ceiling pendants are also considered bad Feng Shui and should be avoided.
12. Avoid electrical devices in the bedroom. Keep your child’s bedroom as EMF free as possible. No TVs, computers, cell phones. Use a battery-powered alarm clock over wall plugged. The disturbance EMFs bring to sleep is heavily documented, and some studies have shown exposure to EMF while sleeping impedes the production of melatonin and in turn disrupts natural sleep cycles.

Find Your Child’s Birth Element

Your Feng Shui birth element is related to your Chinese birth year (different date range to Western years). My daughter was born in the year of the Tiger and has a birth element of Metal (also my own birth element). Use this chart from The Spruce to discover your child’s birth element.

The inspiration color wheel above was created in keeping with a palette from Rodika at Know Feng Shui. She shares more about the palette and its Feng Shui in her post: Get To Know the Feng Shui Color Wheel

Your child’s birth element is the perfect way to personalize their room’s color scheme with decorative accents such as picture frames, decorative pillows or curtains. This can cause problems with shared rooms, something that’s not recommended for good Feng Shui, however, dividing the room with something like a rug can help. Match the birth element with a corresponding palette:

• Wood: Green and brown.
• Fire: Red, yellow, orange, pink, and purple.
• Earth: Beige/pale yellow, browns.
• Metal: White and grey.
• Water: Blue and black.

Consider your Bagua

Your bagua is an energy map for your home. In concept, depending on where you enter your home, different zones of the house will be charged with different energies and will, therefore, be more appropriate for certain activities. Most of us are unable to play around with our floor plan too much, but by identifying rooms and their placement on the bagua map, we can understand what areas need to be enhanced or adjusted.

My daughter’s bedroom is located in the ‘Family’ bagua of the house, an area corresponding with the wood element. This is an area of strength, and appropriate for her personality and needs… greens and browns are perfect accent colors to encourage this energy. 

There are no bad bagua areas of the house for your child’s room, but some energies you may want to encourage more than others. For example, too much fire in a child’s bedroom could encourage temper and conflict. Some elements are nourishing/conflicting to each other, so this is also worth considering. For example, water nourishes both Wood and Earth elements, so accents of blue would also be beneficial in the ‘Family’ bagua.

I appreciate we’re starting to delve towards the complicated stuff, and it must be remembered that Feng Shui is not an exact science. It is fluid and dependant on your own personal needs and lifestyle. Consider the bagua map and allow it to inform, but not dictate your choices.

Assessing the Feng Shui of My Daughter’s Room

I had a good look at my daughter’s room to assess the Feng Shui and help explain the above with an example. My daughter’s birth element is metal and her room is located in the ‘Family’ energy center of the home, complemented by the element wood. Below I have shown a picture highlighting areas of bad Feng Shui, however, I would also like to note everything that is bringing good Feng Shui to the room:

• Wooden bed with solid headboard, raised from the ground and in the ‘command position’;
• The furniture is white, enhancing ‘metal’, while green curtains and a throw pillow enhance ‘wood’;
• Mixed lighting sources build security, and the room is painted in a pastel shade;
• She has a family photo on her dresser.

There is loads of good Feng Shui in Elsie’s room, hooray! However, there is room for improvement:

The red pillow she has brought into the room recently from elsewhere, and it is not a complimentary object to have in her bedroom as someone of the metal birth element. Ideally, I should switch her pointed corner nightstand with something rounded and anything hanging directly above your head is a bit of a no-no. If you’re going to hang something decorative, do it near a window, away from the bed. Lastly, Elsie also has a speaker next to her bed because she likes to listen to music at night… not a great idea in terms of EMF but she does find it very soothing.

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 You now know how to Feng Shui your kid’s room… do let me know how your home’s energy is working for you!