Feng Shui and Your Desk

My desk, with Sunshine in one of her favorite places.

Shannon Del Vecchio told me I needed to move my desk.

Shannon was my feng shui consultant, and she was helping me get my office arranged back a number of years ago. I'd read enough about feng shui to know I had the desk poorly placed, but it took Shannon standing there with me to get the change made.

What's a good desk position? Shannon McGinnis discusses this in her new book, The 10-Minute Tidy: 108 Ways to Organize Your Office Quickly. She writes about putting your desk in the empowerment position:

The empowerment position will have you facing the door of the office when you are sitting at your desk. Ideally you would have a solid wall behind you and if your office has windows, it’s great to be able to look outside.

The position of my desk in my home office now meets all of those criteria — and it really does make the office feel great.

So now I really notice desk placement — in the offices I visit, in magazine photos, in catalogs, and on the web. I see many lovely office pictures — and almost all have them have a desk position that feng shui would frown upon. Pictures showing anything other than the desk facing the wall are so rare that I've started bookmarking them when I stumble upon them!




Here's a desk from Ballard Designs.




And here's one from Horchow.




And here's a fun desk from Restoration Hardware.

For a couple more examples, take a look at Unclutterer and Apartment Therapy.

Yes, it's more complicated when you're talking about a desk with a computer, printer, scanner, etc. — and all the cords that often involves. (I still struggle a bit with cord control.) And yes, not all offices will accommodate such desk positioning. But it's worth at least considering whether such an arrangement might work for the office space you have. Try it, and see if it makes a difference to you.

Disclosure: Shannon McGinnis was my roommate at the 2011 NAPO conference, and she gave me a free copy of her latest book, in PDF form.