Feng Shui - Colours

Nor is it as simple as “paint your bedroom red” for romance, or your kitchen yellow because it’s a kitchen, etc. as some books would have you believe.

Colours are connected to the Five Elements so lets take a look at those.

The Five Elements and their Interaction

Everything we see around us is made up of the five elements, which are: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. They can be thought of as five “flavours” to the energy and their interaction is at the core of understanding how Feng Shui works.

There are two cycles at work:

The Constructive cycle

Wood feeds Fire

Fire feeds Earth

Earth feeds Metal

Metal feeds Water

Water feeds Wood

As each element feeds the next, it gets weaker and the next one gets stronger e.g. Water gets weaker and Wood gets stronger

The Destructive cycle

Wood controls Earth

Earth controls Water

Water controls Fire

Fire controls Metal

Metal controls Wood

If the controlling element is strong enough, the one being controlled is held in check. If it isn’t, both can be destroyed e.g. If you throw a bucket of water on a fire, the fire is extinguished and the water remains as a wet mess on the floor. If you throw a cup of water on the same fire, the fire is damaged and recovers but the water is destroyed.

The Five Elements have many facets which touch on our daily lives and learning how to recognise them is another key aspect of feng shui.

Here are some of the more common examples

Nature of the Elements
Name	Shape	Season	Colour	Body Part
Wood		Spring	Shades of Green	Liver and Gall Bladder
Fire		Summer	Shades of Reds, Oranges and Pinks	Heart, Small intestine
Earth		Change between seasons	Shades of Earth, yellow, brown, beige, cream	Stomach, Spleen
Metal		Autumn	White, Grey and Metallic Colours	Lungs, Large Intestine
Water		Winter	Shades of Blue and Black	Bladder, Kidneys

Just as Yin and Yang need to be balanced (and ideally tuned to what we’re trying to achieve), so to do the five elements. Too much on one and too little of another can lead to disharmony and problems.

By looking at the elements which are present in an area, both physically, arising from the compass directions and the flying star charts etc., we can introduce colours to help create balance and harmony in that area. This in turn helps the people and activities with connections to that space.

DIY TIP

You can introduce a particular element by decorating in that colour - e.g. Greens introduce Wood element.

By combining the Five Element cycle with PaKua you can work out what colours to decorate in to increase or decrease the energy levels in a room - e.g. decorate a room in the South West in Reds (Fire Element) to increase the energy levels, White (Metal Element) to decrease the energy, or Beige (Earth Element) to keep the energy levels the same.

(Be careful though, the Flying Star charts are much more powerful and sometimes require the use of different colours to the standard PaKua).

Colours and elements are also associated with directions and internal parts of a building e.g. East and Southeast are both associated with Wood element and the colour green, so you could decorate these areas in Green without adding any types of feng shui energies which aren’t already there.

However please note that once you move outside the building the relationship between colours and directions differs somewhat from the one shown.