The Effects of Toilets on Your Home's Feng Shui

Bathrooms need special treatment to have good feng shui. On one side, water symbolizes prosperity in feng shui, but too much water leads to stagnation and dampness and poor health. On the other side, all that water has to drain, and the draining action creates a very bad energy and prosperity drain. The toilet is the worst offender.

All the drains in your bathroom drain away good energy, but because the toilet is such a large opening, it sucks the lion's share of energy out of the bathroom. To minimize this, keep the toilet cover on whenever it is not in use, especially when it is flushing. Having the toilet top open while it is flushing is flushing away all your money.

The other thing to do is to block energy from coming into the bathroom in the first place. This means keeping the bathroom door closed. Some feng shui experts are so insistent about this that they recommend putting in a cat door for clients who have to keep the cat box in the bathroom, and so have to let their pet have access to the bathroom at all times. But that door needs to be kept closed, the feng shui experts believe, so they advise clients to put in a pet door so that at least the energy has a smaller door to get through.

Another way to block chi from ever getting into the bathroom in the first place is to put a large mirror on the outside of the bathroom door. A little mirror is not enough -- to really reflect the chi back you want a full length mirror. This is especially important if the bathroom is at the end of a hallway or near stairs or near the front entrance of your house. Blocking the flow of all that incoming chi will keep it from getting sucked down the toilet and will also make it slow down and redistribute throughout the rest of the house.

Keep mirrors inside the bathroom away from the toilet. You do not want the toilet reflected in any mirrors. They will just double the draining action of the toilet.

If possible, block the view of the toilet from the bathroom door. If you have to put up a silk curtain because your bathroom is tight on space, that's fine. Silk is better than other kinds of fabrics, particularly synthetic fabrics, but if you have no other choice, cotton is still better than a synthetic curtain because it is a natural material. A green curtain or a striped curtain will also evoke tree energy to help soak up the extra water and dampness in the bathroom. If you have more room, put a bookshelf or a chest between the door and the toilet. Putting a plant that grows up (as opposed to a vine, which would grow down) will help add some upward tree energy that will also counteract the downward flush of the toilet.

Finally, while the draining toilet needs to be kept away from the other energy in your house as much as possible, it is extremely important that the toilet is in good working order. A toilet that gets backed up regularly symbolizes suppressing something that needs to be dealt with. So keep the toilet clean and clear. In fact, getting the septic tank pumped might be an excellent way to clear out a lot of old yucky stuck energy, too.