Art for the Living Room and Feng Shui Directions: Colors for East, West, South, and North, and a Painting for the Room You Live In

Which room in your home do you spend the most time in? For many families, it is the living room. We eat there, watch television, talk with family, and share tea with guests. When a painting hangs in that room, it comes into view in many different moments of everyday life. Here I have gathered what feng shui says about the living room, along with a few things worth checking when you hang a painting there.

In feng shui, the living room is a place for family and relationships

Rei Taniguchi, a feng shui and psychology counselor in Japan, explains that in feng shui the living room is “the place that governs the energy of daily life, relationships, and family fortune.” It is where the family gathers and where guests are welcomed, so it has long been treated as an important room.

Ms. Taniguchi’s suggestions are easy to bring into everyday life. Brightness matters for family time, so a room with little sunlight can be brightened with lighting and lighter interior colors. A monochrome room can be stylish, but on its own it makes it harder to welcome good energy, so she suggests adding color with cushions or curtains. The corner diagonally opposite the door is said to gather energy, so it is best kept tidy and clean. A painting on the wall is one more way to add color and brightness to a room.

Directions and colors: the Five Elements

Feng shui holds that everything in nature is made of five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. According to color consultant Hanae Matsumoto, the five elements are also matched with five colors (blue/green, red, yellow, white, and black) and five directions (east, south, center, west, and north).

Based on this idea, the colors said to suit each direction are often described like this:

East (wood): green and blue. Associated with work and health
South (fire): red and purple. Associated with popularity and beauty
West (metal): white, silver, and gold. Associated with wealth and relationships; yellow is also often mentioned
North (water): navy. Warm-colored fabrics are said to help the flow of energy

The idea is to look at which direction your living room wall faces and choose a painting that includes that direction’s colors. However, how colors are matched to directions can differ between schools and books. I think it works best to treat feng shui as one traditional way of thinking, and to use it as a gentle hint when choosing: “For this direction, a painting with these colors might be nice.”

Things to check when hanging art in the living room

Your eye level when seated: In the living room we spend more time sitting on the sofa or in chairs than standing. If the painting comes naturally into view when you sit down, it becomes part of your everyday relaxation (I wrote about how high to hang art above a sofa in my article on hanging height)
Light: Daylight and evening lamps. The colors of a painting look different at different times of day. To take care of the work, it is safer to move it a little away from spots where strong sunlight falls on it for long hours
Matching the room’s colors: The colors of your curtains and sofa, and the colors of the painting. Repeating a color helps the painting blend in, while a different color becomes an accent in the room
How everyone feels: Unlike a private room, the living room is seen by family and guests. Whether people feel at ease looking at it is another helpful clue when choosing

From someone who hangs my work at home

A woman in her twenties commissioned a painting to hang in her new home, as a way to mark her move. She told me: “The painting that arrived is colorful and cute, yet somehow powerful. A painting created from who ‘I’ am is my greatest treasure!” I am truly happy that a painting born from her own story is there in the place where her new life begins.

My commissioned art begins with listening to the person’s story before I paint. When we already know the painting will hang in the living room, I also ask about the room’s light, which way the wall faces, and how the family spends time there, and I think about color and size together with that. Paintings for yourself or someone dear to you are described on the PERSONAL ORDER ART page, and paintings for companies and clinics on the BUSINESS ART page.

Summary

In feng shui, the living room is described as the place that governs the energy of daily life, relationships, and family fortune
Brightness and avoiding an all-monochrome palette are considered important, and a painting is one way to add color to the room
In the Five Elements view, east suits green and blue, south red, west white and gold, and north navy. Explanations differ between schools
When hanging art, check your seated eye level, the light, the room’s colors, and how everyone feels, so the painting is pleasant to see every day

Sources

All About (風水でリビングをプチ模様替え！開運インテリアのコツ) Rei Taniguchi
All About (風水の色の基本……色を変えて開運！) Hanae Matsumoto
Rakuten Ichiba (西の方角にはこの色を取り入れて！方角別、風水インテリアカラー)
Mermaid nao official website (VOICES)