Bed placement is the most-asked question in feng shui, and most answers skip the part that decides it. Ba Zhai — the Eight Mansions school — assigns every person eight directions based on a Kua number derived from birth year and gender: four favorable, four unfavorable. For a bed, the direction that matters is the one the crown of your head points toward while you sleep, not the direction the bed appears to face from the doorway. Those are different measurements and they frequently disagree, which is why two people can follow the same advice and end up with opposite arrangements. This piece walks the eight directions, gives the full Kua table so you can find yours, explains the one rule that overrides direction entirely, and is honest about where the schools diverge.
The measurement everyone skips
In Ba Zhai — the Eight Mansions school, the branch that works from a personal Kua number — a bed is judged by the direction the crown of your head points toward while you sleep.
That is not the same as "the direction the bed faces." A desk faces where you look. A house faces its front door. A bed, in this school, is read from the head.
So if your headboard sits against the south wall and you sleep with your head at that end, your head direction is south. Saying "my feet point north" is the same fact restated, not a second measurement. Two people following identical advice will arrange their rooms differently if one of them measures from the headboard and the other from the foot, and both will believe they followed the rule.
Get this straight before anything else, because every direction below is useless if you are measuring the wrong end of the bed.
Your eight directions
Ba Zhai assigns every person eight directions, derived from a Kua number calculated from birth year and gender. Four are favorable, four are not. They are not vague moods — each has a name, a domain, and a fixed position in your personal sequence.
The four favorable:
- Sheng Qi (生氣) — Success and wealth. The strongest of the four.
- Tian Yi (天醫) — Health, literally "heavenly doctor."
- Yan Nian (延年) — Love and longevity, the relationship direction.
- Fu Wei (伏位) — Stability and personal growth. The quietest, and the one most often chosen for a bed.
The four unfavorable:
- Huo Hai (禍害) — Mishap. The mildest of the four.
- Wu Gui (五鬼) — Five Ghosts, associated with betrayal and friction.
- Liu Sha (六殺) — Six Killings, associated with conflict and loss.
- Jue Ming (絕命) — Total Loss. The one to move first.
For a bedroom, the two most commonly chosen are Tian Yi (health) and Fu Wei (stability) — sleep is restorative rather than ambitious, and the wealth direction is generally spent on a desk instead. That is a preference in classical practice, not a computed result.
The full Kua table
Find your Kua number using the Kua Number Calculator, then read across. The order is fixed: the first four entries are your favorable directions in the order given above, the last four are your unfavorable ones in the order given above.
| Kua | Sheng Qi | Tian Yi | Yan Nian | Fu Wei | Huo Hai | Wu Gui | Liu Sha | Jue Ming | | --- | -------- | ------- | -------- | ------ | ------- | ------ | ------- | -------- | | 1 | SE | E | S | N | W | NE | NW | SW | | 2 | NE | W | NW | SW | E | SE | S | N | | 3 | S | N | SE | E | SW | NW | NE | W | | 4 | N | S | E | SE | NW | SW | W | NE | | 6 | W | NE | SW | NW | SE | E | N | S | | 7 | NW | SW | NE | W | N | S | SE | E | | 8 | SW | NW | W | NE | S | N | E | SE | | 9 | E | SE | N | S | NE | W | SW | NW |
There is no row for 5. Kua 5 does not exist in Ba Zhai — the calculation can produce it, but it carries no direction set, so it is remapped: to 2 for men and 8 for women. Our engine performs exactly this substitution rather than returning an error, which is why a Kua-5 birth year still yields a usable table.
You may notice the numbers split cleanly into two families. Kua 1, 3, 4 and 9 share the same favorable set (N, S, E, SE) in different orders — the East Group. Kua 2, 6, 7 and 8 share the other (W, NW, NE, SW) — the West Group. This is why partners sometimes find their directions are perfectly compatible or perfectly opposed, with nothing in between.
The rule that overrides direction
Here is the part that gets buried under direction charts: structural placement outranks compass direction in classical practice.
Three conditions come first.
Your head should be against a solid wall. Not a window, not an open span. The traditional reasoning is about the sense of backing and support; the practical reading is that people sleep worse with an unprotected head, and every school agrees on the outcome even where they disagree on why.
Your bed should not be in a direct line with the door. The "coffin position" — feet pointing straight out the doorway — is the single most consistently condemned arrangement across every branch of feng shui. It is also, not coincidentally, the arrangement that puts you in the path of anyone entering.
You should be able to see the door without facing it squarely. A diagonal sight line from the bed, usually called the command position.
If your favorable direction requires violating one of these, classical practice takes the structure and accepts the direction. A bed pointed at your Sheng Qi direction with your head under a window is considered worse than a bed in your Huo Hai direction with your head against a solid wall.
Where the schools actually disagree
Two honest caveats, because pretending they do not exist is how feng shui advice earns its reputation.
Ba Zhai is not the only system, and it is not the most precise one. It works from birth year and gender alone — which means everyone born in the same year, of the same gender, gets the same eight directions regardless of where or when in that year they were born. Xuan Kong Da Gua, the 64-hexagram branch, reads the same space at far finer resolution. Flying Star adds a time dimension Ba Zhai has no concept of. If Ba Zhai gives you an answer you cannot live with, that is a reason to look at a finer system, not a reason to force the room. We cover the distinction in Feng Shui vs Xuan Kong Da Gua.
Shared beds have no computed answer. Two people, two Kua numbers, one bed orientation. Ba Zhai has nothing to say about whose direction wins, and any source that gives you a confident rule is giving you a house preference dressed as doctrine.
What to actually do
Find your Kua number. Read your four favorable directions off the table. Then look at your room and ask, in this order: is my head against a solid wall, am I out of the door's direct line, and can I see the entrance. Only once those are satisfied does direction become the deciding factor — and then take the best of your four that the room allows.
That is the whole method. The reason it produces forty contradictory answers online is that most of those answers are solving for direction first and structure never, on a measurement half of them are taking from the wrong end of the bed.
If you want the eight directions computed from your own birth data rather than read off a table, the Kua Number Calculator is free and runs the same engine described here. For how the same eight directions apply to a workspace — where the measurement genuinely is facing, not head position — see Feng Shui Desk Direction.
For reflection, education and entertainment.
Frequently asked questions
Does the bed direction mean where the headboard is, or where my feet point?
In Ba Zhai it is the direction the crown of your head points toward while lying down. If your headboard is against the south wall and you sleep with your head at that end, your head direction is south. Your feet pointing north is the same fact stated backwards, not a second measurement.
What if my favorable direction is impossible in my room?
Take the best available of your four favorable directions. If none is reachable, classical practice prioritises the structural rules — head against a solid wall, not in line with the door — over direction, because those govern whether you sleep well at all.
My partner and I have different Kua numbers. Whose direction wins?
There is no computed answer to this; Ba Zhai assigns directions per person and a shared bed has one orientation. Common practice favors the person sleeping worse, or the one whose four favorable directions overlap with a workable wall. Any source claiming a definitive rule is stating a preference.
Is Kua 5 real?
No. Kua 5 has no direction set in Ba Zhai. It is remapped — to 2 for men and 8 for women — which is exactly what our engine does when the calculation lands on 5.