Can feng shui sell a house?

Feng shui — the ancient Chinese art of house healing that became a craze in the 90s — is being resurrected. From posh, new London condos to cluttered family living rooms, crystals and wind chimes are once again twinkling and tinkling.

It evolved around 5,000 years ago in China, but in its British heyday, everyone from Madonna to Richard Branson and even, allegedly, members of the Royal family were using this esoteric “acupuncture for houses” — and feng shui consultants earned more than architects (or so an architect friend grumbled).

“It went quiet for a time, but feng shui is definitely coming back,” says Gina Lazenby, author of several books on the subject. Even Battersea Power Station has been given the treatment, according to consultant Tram Anh, of property group RFR. “Westerners have also turned to this ancient discipline in the hope that it will bring some much-needed peace and balance to their modern-day lives.” If you can get the flow right, good health and good fortune should follow. If the feng shui is all wrong, you risk falling prey to bad luck and misfortune, she warns.

I first came across feng shui when I was broke, working for a small magazine and living in a north London Victorian terrace. I interviewed William Spear, a New York-based feng shui consultant, who told me my house was “missing its money corner”. The “cure” involved heavy plant pots and strategically placed mirrors. With nothing to lose, I followed his instructions and within a week I’d been headhunted and my salary quadrupled. Intrigued, I wrote a book, Spirit of the Home, and I haven’t taken any chances since.

I’m currently house hunting and, as I surf the web, I skip over the pretty pictures and click on the floor plan. It offers a better prediction of whether a place will be a warm, happy home, a vibrant exciting one, or a disaster. It sounds nuts but I’ve learnt not to ignore the feng shui flow.

Back in 2007, my husband Adrian and I were looking for a family home in the small Somerset town of Dulverton. We’d fallen in love with its independent shops and award-winning pubs. Surrounded by forest and moorland with the River Barle tumbling through, it was, we reasoned, the perfect place to raise a child. How-ever, we simply couldn’t find a house that fitted our needs, with character, space, a large garden, privacy, views and yet just a bibulous stumble from the pub.

Then I found Woodcote. Part of an old sporting hotel with a reputation for being “frisky and a bit wild” back in its heyday in the 60s. Its decor was firmly stuck in the 70s and the bathroom and kitchen deserved museum status. It was, however, blissfully quirky — Georgian with arts and crafts add-ons plus a vast vaulted living room built in the 30s as the hotel’s party room.

“I love it,” I said to Adrian. “But it’s a feng shui nightmare.” But it had “good bones”. It was nicely symmetrical with generous proportions and no missing corners, even though the old hotel layout was an energy void, with long, dark corridors and an ill-placed kitchen. Its position was perfect and the garden was gorgeous. “It just needs a little remodelling,” I said brightly.

A year of builders and dust ensued. We rewired, replumbed, repaired and replaced. We created a new kitchen and banished the old bathroom to the skip. The house looked great but it still didn’t feel right. So I called in the experts. A local feng shui consultant said, diplomatically, that I’d been a little too enthusiastic: crystals were prescribed. My office was moved and mirrors went up on the walls of the loo to stop “financial energy leaking out”.

This was easy to do but I can almost hear Mark Sakautzky, consultant at the International Feng Shui Association, give a little sigh. “Feng shui is nearly always publicised as some sort of quick-fix interior decoration, but it is energy architecture, based on vortex mathe-matics, acupuncture in land, garden and house.”

Whether easy or hard, there is resurgence of interest. “The awareness of feng shui has been maturing in Britain,” says Sarah McAllister, another feng shui master. “Forward-thinking estate agents and property developers are now seeing it as a really valuable asset,” she adds.

Eight years on, we have put Woodcote on the market. Our son James has moved to sixth-form college, and it’s time to return to the city. We’re hopeful of a swift sale — after all, how many houses have not only been thoroughly refurbished physically, but have also had a total energetic overhaul?

How to feng shui your home Declutter bedrooms. Clutter builds up and takes time to clear. Identify what is causing the clutter; then work back from there, says Yasmin Choppin at Houzz.co.uk, the home renovation and design platform. Victoria Harrison, UK
editor from Houzz.co.uk, tells you to introduce built-in storage solutions. “We constantly see ‘small kitchen’, ‘small bathroom’ and ‘small garden’ among our top 30 most searched keywords. To make the most of the shortage of space we have, we find our community constantly looking for storage solutions. In fact, 68 per cent of people undergoing kitchen renovations prioritise the ability to store and find things, over and above design functions.”

 The kitchen is not the heart of the home. the state of the kitchen is linked to the state of your health. Don’t put it at the centre of the home. The central room should be peaceful, such as a snug. Don’t place the stove opposite the sink, as the fire and water elements clash.

 Bring serenity to your bathroom. Traditional feng shui enthusiasts give bathrooms a bad rap because water, like chi, flows out. Put the plug in, keep the toilet seat down, add dimmer lights, and mirrors to keep energy in.