The facing of a house is the compass direction straight ahead of you as you step out through the main entrance. Read that bearing with a calibrated phone compass held flat, take three readings away from metal, and match the result to one of eight sectors, each 45 degrees wide. Small errors, and the gap between magnetic and true north, rarely move a house from one sector to the next.
What “facing” means
In popular Vastu a house is named after the direction its main entrance looks towards. Stand on the threshold with the inside of the house behind you and look ahead, at right angles to the wall the door is set in. That compass direction is the facing.
Two other measurements get confused with it. A plot is often named by the road it fronts, which on a corner plot may not match the door. And the Brihat Samhita’s entrance table (53.72 to 53.75) works from the door’s position on its wall, so two doors at opposite ends of an east wall share a facing but not a pada. Finding the pada needs a bearing from the centre of the home to the door, which the entrance checker uses and the guide to the 32 padas explains.
Reading it with a phone
- Take off any magnetic case or car mount plate.
- Calibrate. Open the compass app and move the phone slowly in a figure of eight, tilting it through every angle, until it stops asking.
- Choose true north if the app offers it. That setting uses your location to correct the magnetic reading.
- Stand in the doorway facing out and hold the phone flat at waist height, its top edge pointing straight out from the wall, not angled along the path. Floor tiles laid square to the wall make a handy guide.
- Note the bearing in degrees clockwise from north: 0 north, 90 east, 180 south, 270 west.
- Repeat twice, a pace outside the door and a few metres along the path, still facing the same way.
Use the middle number. A spread of more than about ten degrees means something is disturbing the sensor: steel doors and grilles, a parked car, a fridge, an inverter battery, speakers or the steel bars inside concrete floors can each pull a reading off by tens of degrees, so readings a few steps outside are usually steadier. A traditional baseplate compass is affected the same way; hold it level and keep keys and the phone clear of it.
Magnetic north and true north
A needle points to magnetic north; true north is the direction of the earth’s axis. The angle between them, called declination, varies from place to place and drifts slowly over the years.
In India it is small, roughly 0 to 3 degrees across most of the country as an approximate figure, which hardly registers against a 45 degree sector.
Elsewhere it can be large. Parts of Canada see 10 to 20 degrees or more, while the United Kingdom’s is small at present. Abroad, look up the current figure for your town with a declination calculator from a national geomagnetic survey, or set the phone to true north. To correct by hand, add an easterly declination to the reading and subtract a westerly one.
The Manasara, in Acharya’s summary, fixes the quarters with the sun, not a needle, so true north is the more faithful reference, even if in India the choice seldom changes the answer.
Why a few degrees rarely matter
A calibrated phone is often good only to within five to ten degrees, yet each sector spans 45, so most houses land well inside one. The equal eight-way split is the usual modern convention.
| Facing | Bearing looking out (degrees from true north) |
|---|---|
| North | 337.5 to 22.5 |
| North-east | 22.5 to 67.5 |
| East | 67.5 to 112.5 |
| South-east | 112.5 to 157.5 |
| South | 157.5 to 202.5 |
| South-west | 202.5 to 247.5 |
| West | 247.5 to 292.5 |
| North-west | 292.5 to 337.5 |
Close to an edge? If your readings fall within about five to seven degrees of a boundary, read again outdoors with true north on, then check with a sun method below. If it still sits on the line, read both neighbouring guides, say the east-facing house and the north-east-facing house. A house between two names is not defective.
Without a compass: the sun
The Manasara’s gnomon
Acharya’s summary describes an upright peg at the centre of a circle on level ground. Before noon, mark where the shrinking shadow tip first meets the circle; after noon, mark where the lengthening shadow crosses it again. Joining the marks gives a west to east line, and a line square to it, found by crossing two arcs, runs north to south. The sun stands equally high at times equally spaced around midday, so the two shadows match, and the result is true north in either hemisphere. For the classical background, see the eight directions.
The quick shadow stick
- Push a straight stick about a metre long upright into level ground.
- Put a pebble at the tip of its shadow.
- Wait at least 20 minutes and put a second pebble at the new tip.
- The line from first pebble to second runs roughly west to east. With the first on your left and the second on your right, you face north.
A longer wait around midday gives a cleaner line.
Two shortcuts to avoid
Sunrise. The sun rises due east only around the equinoxes, near 20 March and 23 September. Near midsummer it rises well north of east, and near midwinter well south, by roughly 25 degrees or a little more across India: over half a sector.
The noon shadow. In much of the northern hemisphere it points north, but in the tropics, which take in a large part of India, the summer sun can pass north of overhead and the shadow then points south.
South of the equator
In Australia, South Africa or anywhere else south of the equator, Vastu’s directions are not reversed. North stays north and the eight sectors keep their names. Only the midday sun moves to the northern sky, which changes which rooms catch the light.
Flats, L-shaped houses and awkward fronts
A flat. Read at your own front door, looking out into the corridor, and if you like, at the building’s main entrance too, labelling both. Practitioners differ on which counts; the apartments guide says what carries over.
An L-shaped or irregular house. The front is whichever wall holds the main entrance. Measure square to that wall, not to the longest wall or the road.
An angled door, or several doors. Measure square to the main door itself, the one visitors use, and note any side door separately.
What cannot be changed and what helps
The facing of a built house is fixed, and none of the texts read for this site asks anyone to alter it; remedies without demolition covers what a household can do instead. What you control is the quality of the reading: calibration, distance from metal, three readings, true north and a sun check when it is close. A careful measurement usually turns out calmer than the worry that prompted it.
Frequently asked questions
↳ How do I know which direction my house faces?
Stand in the main doorway, look straight out and read a calibrated compass held flat. Repeat from two nearby spots and match the middle reading to the eight 45 degree sectors.
↳ Should I use magnetic north or true north for Vastu?
True north is closer to the classical method, which used the sun. In India the difference is a few degrees at most, approximately, and rarely changes the sector. Abroad it can be far larger, so switch the phone to true north or correct by your local declination.
↳ Are directions reversed in the southern hemisphere?
No. North, south, east and west are the same compass directions everywhere, and the facing is read the same way. Only the position of the midday sun differs.
↳ Which way does a flat face, the building or my front door?
Practitioners differ. Your own front door is the natural reading, while some prefer the building's entrance or the balcony side. The classical texts describe houses on plots and do not decide it.
Sources
- Varahamihira, Brihat Samhita, chapter 53, verses 72 to 75 (entrance results by pada), in the English translations by N. Chidambaram Iyer (1884) and V. Subrahmanya Sastri (1946).
- Prasanna Kumar Acharya, Summary of the Manasara, for fixing the directions with a gnomon and the sun.
- The phone, compass, declination and shadow-stick steps are standard surveying and navigation practice in this site’s own words. The eight equal facing sectors are a modern convention.