Are you finding it hard to escape your stress? Feeling unblanced and not knowing why? Maybe it’s your room. Feng Shui is the key to rebalancing your life in all aspects, starting with your dorm room.
Our rooms are one of the few places we have to decompress and hide — you could say our rooms are our safe haven. We design our rooms to fit us practically, characteristically, and overall in a way that lessens the daily noise.
For a college student, we NEED our rooms for sleeping or a quick nap. It’s not a place where we go to be lazy, it’s a place where we rebuild before venturing back out. What better way to create a dorm room then starting from Feng Shui – obtaining peace and balance.
What is feng shui?
When I studied abroad in France, I had the opportunity to take design classes outside of my major. In this design class, I learned how to present myself through my room design. Whether that be color, shapes, plants, in design we showcase ourselves through various mediums.
Now, how do we create a space that is ourselves and promotes rest. My answer is that we look to Feng Shui.
Feng Shui, wind-water, is a Chinese practice that centers around balanced energy flow. The goal is for your environment to assist your goals — through Chi. Chi is the life force of all living beings and is our physical, emotional, and spiritual element.
For those who are on interior design tok, you may be very familiar with Mr. Cliff Tan – Feng Shui practitioner. A lot of his content on TikTok surrounds the practice of feng shui and how to design your room in the best way possible. He talks about the principles and helps people with smaller rooms that might imitate yours to maximize space and Chi.
Cliff Tan says Feng Shui isn’t “just about looks it’s about how it makes you feel.” This process is very self reflective and encourages you to use self care practices. This principle is especially important for when you have deadlines, work, or overvall stressed — we need a place that will heal us.
From page to room
Designing a room is not just a fun hobby, it can also be a calculated spiritual puzzle. Feng Shui is a Chinese practice about the balance of life and how to cultivate it to your benefit. We must create a room that allows for you to exist freely. Feng Shui allows you to build and rebuild again while having the basic formula to harmony.
It is especially important for her us to have harmony in a shared space. So here is an example of how to dapple Feng Shui to your own dorm. We will be using an image of what my dorm looked like at the beginning and the issues with this set up.
Separation of room: Because I was in a dorm room, a lot of my items were pressed together to maximize space, so all of my living areas were compressed.
Bed Position: My bed was pressed up onto the window facing the door. So in terms of Feng Shui, I was getting attacked at the head when I slept. The high beam caused a lot of imbalance in the room, as well as the dresser by blocking the light flow.
Decorations: Although not present in this picture, I had a picture of nature, Polaroids of my friends by my dresser, and posters displayed above my desk.
While it can be fun to have these type of decor or configuration it can be a lot mentally to be calm in this room. Since we are doing our doing our studying, dressing, and sleeping in this room we want to make the room feel as big and open as possible.
So here are some changes I would make to this room now:
Separation of room: Consider working with your roommate to have a theme, so you are both on the same page. If not, that’s okay we can work on keeping your stuff to your side. Moving the desk where the dresser is helps to create a divide between work and sleep — the dresser acts as a mountain to divide the spaces from each other.
Bed Position: Keeping the bed there is okay, if we have some sort of barrier between you and the window. Consider adding a makeshift headboard to break the space between the window and your bed. Plus, it stops your pillows from rolling off. Adding some texture and flows elements to that harsh support beam allows you to soften the room.
Decorations: My decorations weren’t a problem, but if I were to change them I would add small mirrors (coupled with coverings if facing my bed), more motivational collages by the desk, and flowy elements.
Although I loved my dorm room, thinking about it in terms of Feng Shui really helped understand the feelings I had in the room. The colors brightness my mood, but I was always tired, feeling unmotivated, and tight. The new configuration of my room is something I wished I implemented because I know I could’ve been more productive if given the chance. So that’s why I suggest trying this out now, so that your winter arc is effective.
Reflection
Now that I have a big girl apartment, I have the chance to expand on ideas from the foundation Feng Shui created. I am living without restriction. I am taking the time to have curated aesthetic that is light, playful, and restful. And let me tell you, Im a girl who loves sleep. The position where I gave my bed isn’t perfect, but it allows me to experiment whether this positioning is right for sleep.
It also gives me an excuse to scroll on Pinterest for hours creating the perfect budget friendly divisions. So calling all my Pinterest girlies, you now have an excuse to doom scroll.
It’s not about how fast you can complete your room, but about becoming intentional with how you show up for yourself. You could take months to complete your room, but the process you go through will last over the span of several room designs.
If you want to create your room in Feng Shui, here’s how you get started:
- Read this article – you’ve already completed this step. Thank you for reading this far.
- Decide what kind of aesthetic you towards. What you choose should calm you.
- Look up Mr. Cliff Tan on TikTok for more examples and figuring out how to balance your room.
- Look at the layout of your room, if you can, to decide where and how to place things. Remember we want our bed in command position.
- Play. The only way to see if something works is by trying it out.
I hope this article has inspired you to create, design beautifully, and sleep well.
Happy designing.
