Find north, and see which direction your home or office faces
Hold the phone flat, screen up.
ℹ️ Stand in your main doorway looking outwards, hold the phone flat, and read the direction shown. That is the direction your home or office faces. Readings are to magnetic north — the same reference a traditional compass gives — and metal grilles, reinforced concrete and phone cases can pull them several degrees out.
Wealth and opportunity
Home: Keep it open, light and uncluttered — this is the side money is said to arrive from. A living room, a study, the drinking-water source or an underground tank all sit well here. A safe placed here should open towards the north.
Office: The best wall for the cash counter, the accounts desk and the marketing team. Keep the north wall lighter and lower than the south.
Avoid: A heavy store, a toilet, or a staircase pressing down on this side.
Clarity, prayer and health
Home: The most sacred corner of a plot, and the one Vastu asks you to protect above all others. The pooja room, a meditation seat and the drinking-water source belong here. Keep it the cleanest, lightest and lowest-built part of the house.
Office: A small shrine, the water dispenser, and the corner of a boardroom where difficult decisions are taken. Keep it visibly clear.
Avoid: No toilet, kitchen, staircase, storeroom or heavy machinery — a blocked or cut north-east is the defect Vastu treats most seriously.
Health, learning and recognition
Home: The main door, wide windows, a children's study. Morning light reaching inside is the whole point of an east opening, so keep this side unobstructed.
Office: Seat your staff facing east where you can. An east entrance is considered as auspicious as a north one.
Avoid: Tall trees, a high boundary wall or stacked storage that blocks the morning sun.
Energy, digestion and drive
Home: The kitchen — with the cook facing east while cooking. The gas, the geyser and the electrical panel all belong to this corner.
Office: Servers, the electrical room, generators and the pantry.
Avoid: A bedroom (especially a child's), an underground water tank, or the pooja room. Fire and water in the same corner is a classic defect.
Stability and rest
Home: Weight belongs here: wardrobes, heavy furniture, a bedroom for the elders of the house. Build this side taller and heavier than the north.
Office: Heavy storage, records and the archive. A south wall behind the seniors' seats gives them support.
Avoid: Leaving the south hollow, open or lower than the north; and the main water source.
Strength, control and relationships
Home: The master bedroom, with the head of the bed towards the south or the west. This should be the heaviest, tallest and most enclosed part of the building.
Office: The owner's or managing director's cabin, sitting with a solid wall behind and facing north or east. The safe belongs here too, opening towards the north.
Avoid: A toilet, an underground tank, a borewell, a pit or a descending staircase. Never leave the south-west lower or lighter than the north-east.
Gains and reputation
Home: The dining room, a children's bedroom, storage or the staircase. An overhead water tank sits well towards the west or south-west.
Office: Staff seating, the pantry and the dispatch area.
Avoid: Large unshaded glass that lets the afternoon sun heat the building.
Movement, guests and support
Home: The guest room, a grown daughter's room, the store for grain, and a bathroom if one is needed on that side. Things placed here are said to move on — which is exactly what a guest room is for.
Office: Finished goods waiting to leave, the dispatch bay, marketing and HR. Meeting rooms do well here, because decisions taken in the north-west tend to move.
Avoid: The master bedroom, and long-term stock you actually want to hold.
The breathing space of a building
Home: Keep it open. The old courtyard house was built around exactly this idea — light and air reaching the middle of the home.
Office: An open floor, not a cabin, a server room or a store.
Avoid: A staircase, a lavatory, a well, a heavy pillar or a beam crossing the centre.
Room by room, for a home and for a workplace — where the kitchen, the bed, the pooja room, the safe and the owner's desk belong.
Vastu tips for home & office →Your phone has a magnetometer — the same thing a compass needle is. In the ZingAstro app we read that sensor directly, which also lets us tell you when it needs calibrating. In a mobile browser we use the standard device-orientation reading. A desktop computer has no such sensor, so the dial will not move there.
The reading is against magnetic north, which is what a traditional compass shows and what Vastu has always been read against. Across India the difference from true north is roughly half a degree to three degrees — small enough that it does not move a room from one sector to another.
Hold the phone flat and level, away from steel almirahs, laptops, speakers and magnetic covers. Take the reading two or three times from slightly different spots in the doorway; if they agree within a few degrees, you have your direction.