Vastu for a house in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia

Most Vastu advice is written for a house that is still a drawing: a plot you chose, walls you placed, a kitchen you put in the south-east because that is where it belongs. Vastu for a house in the USA, the UK, Canada or Australia usually starts somewhere else. The house already exists, the lot faces the way the street runs, and the homeowners' association has opinions about your front door.

That changes what is useful to know. It does not make the tradition irrelevant.

Taking a compass reading in a Western home

A phone compass is enough, but Western houses are harder on it than most.

Timber-frame walls hide steel strapping, ductwork and wiring. Fridges, ranges, radiators and the garage door motor all pull a magnetometer. Take the reading near the middle of the house, away from appliances and metal frames, and take it more than once. If two readings a few steps apart disagree, trust neither until you find a spot where they settle.

Two further cautions:

• Magnetic and true north are not the same. Most phone compasses can show either. The gap depends on where you live and can be large enough to move a wall from one zone into the next. Practitioners do not all agree on which to use, so note which one you used and stick with it.
• Read the door from inside, looking out. That is the direction the door faces. People routinely report the opposite.

Once you have north, draw it on a rough sketch of the floor plan and divide the plan into the eight directions around its centre. Everything else follows from that sketch.

A note on the Southern Hemisphere

People in Australia and New Zealand often ask whether Vastu flips south of the equator, since the sun sits in the northern sky there rather than the southern.

The traditional view is that it does not. Vastu directions are compass directions: north-east is north-east in Sydney exactly as it is in Delhi, and the guidance is applied without reversal. Some modern writers argue that the climatic reasoning behind certain rules should be mirrored, and that is a reasonable thing to think about for shade and comfort. But it is a modern argument, not the classical rule, and this site applies the directions as the tradition gives them.

Vastu for a house in the USA: what you can change and what you cannot

It is worth being honest about this, because most of the anxiety around Vastu abroad comes from treating fixed things as faults to be fixed.

What you usually cannot change:

• the orientation of the lot and the direction the house faces the street
• the position of the main door, stairs, plumbing and the kitchen
• anything an HOA, a strata committee, a landlord or the building code controls

What you almost always can:

• Where the bed head points. The usual guidance is head towards the south or east while sleeping, and not towards the north. Moving a bed costs nothing. The bedroom guide covers placement within the room.
• Which way you face at a desk. Facing north, north-east or east while working or studying is the traditional preference.
• Where the puja shelf goes. The north-east corner of the home, or of a room, is the classic place, with north and east as the next choices. A wall shelf counts. The pooja room guide goes through the options.
• How you use the stove. You cannot move a gas range in a rented apartment, but you can often stand facing east while you cook, which is the part of the kitchen guidance most within your control.
• Colours, clutter and light, especially at the entrance.

That second list is where nearly all of the practical value sits, and none of it needs a contractor.

Common Western layouts

Open kitchen and living space

Traditional texts assume a closed kitchen, ideally in the south-east, the direction associated with Agni. In an open plan, the zone the cooking area sits in matters more than where the room officially ends. If the range falls in the south-east of the house, that is the traditional first choice, and the north-west is the accepted second. If it falls elsewhere, the usual advice is to keep the cooking area clean and well defined, and to cook facing east where you can. The kitchen guide has the verdict for each direction.

Entering through the garage

In many American and Canadian homes, the family comes in through the garage and the formal front door is rarely opened. Practitioners disagree about which one to read. Many treat the main door as the architectural entrance, the one the house was designed around, however seldom it is used; others give more weight to the door the household actually walks through every day. If you are unsure, read both, and keep the garage entry uncluttered and well lit either way, since that is where you actually arrive.

Basements

Basements are rare in Indian homes and common in North America. The traditional preference is for the north and east of a building to be the lower, lighter side and for the south-west to be the heaviest, highest part. A full basement under the whole house is not something you can move. The practical reading is to use it for storage, a gym or a workshop rather than the main bedroom, and to keep it dry and lit.

En-suite bathrooms

Western homes often have a bathroom inside every bedroom. Tradition prefers bathrooms away from the north-east, the east, the south-east, the south-west and the centre of the house, with the north-west as the preferred zone. The classic remedy for one you cannot move is simple: keep the door closed, keep it clean and ventilated, and avoid sleeping with your head against the shared wall where you have a choice.

When the main door faces south

This is one of the questions asked most often, and the answer is calmer than people expect.

A south-facing door is not a prediction of misfortune. The tradition treats it as a door that needs more care, and many houses in the street will face the same way. The adjustments usually suggested are:

• Light it well. A clear, bright entrance at night is one of the most commonly recommended adjustments.
• Keep the threshold clean and defined. A doormat, a marked threshold and nothing stacked against the door.
• Keep the door itself solid and in good repair, opening smoothly and fully.
• Place auspicious symbols, if that is your practice. A red swastik on the door, or an Om or an image of Ganesha above or beside it, is the traditional choice, and some also fix a copper pyramid above the frame. These are matters of faith and custom, not hardware.
• Look at where the door sits along the wall. Divide the south wall into eight equal parts, counting from the south-east corner: a door in the third or fourth part is traditionally considered good, and one towards the south-west end is read less kindly. You cannot move it, but it is worth knowing which you have.

If your HOA restricts what you can attach to the door, lighting and a clean, uncluttered entry are still entirely yours. The main door guide gives the reading for all eight directions with the remedies for each, and which direction should your main door face explains the reasoning behind them.

Start with your own plan

Take a compass reading, sketch the plan, and check each room against its guide. The Vastu guide lists every room and feature, from the entrance to the kitchen to the bedroom, with the verdict for each direction and the remedies when a direction cannot change.

A house abroad was not built with Vastu in mind, and it does not need to be rebuilt to suit it. Most of what the tradition asks of you is in where you sleep, where you pray, which way you face and how you keep the entrance, and all of that you can decide this weekend.