What is Feng ShuiFeng ShuiPronounced "fung-shway." A centuries-old Chinese practice for reading how a building's shape, layout, and orientation interact with the people living in it. "Feng Shui" literally translates to "wind-water" -- the idea that a home sits inside a flow of natural forces the same way it sits inside actual wind and water, and that arranging a home thoughtfully within that flow matters.
Full glossary → (pronounced "fung-shway"), really?
Feng Shui ("wind and water" in Chinese) is exactly what it sounds like: a practice built around how wind exposure, water, sunlight, terrain, and the physical shape of a piece of land affect a home's comfort and livability. That's not a mystical name -- it's a description of what's actually being studied. Long before anyone called it Feng Shui, people were making the same observations: a home sheltered from harsh wind, near clean water, with good sun exposure and solid ground underfoot, was simply a better place to live. Feng Shui organized those observations into a formal practice.
It's also one of the oldest continuously practiced traditions of environmental observation in the world -- documented for well over three thousand years, refined across generations by people whose literal job was reading landscapes for where to build and live safely. That's a long track record of real-world observation, not a modern invention. It's also why ProperQi's Form School factors below (water, green space, terrain, road exposure, hazards, sun/compass direction) line up so closely with things anyone cares about in a home, whether they're touring it or have lived there for years, like walkability or a quiet lot: it's the same physical reality, described in an older vocabulary.
The single most important thing to understand: Feng Shui was never about labeling a place "good" or "bad." It's a diagnostic -- understanding what you're actually dealing with -- paired with a tradition of cures and adjustments for working with it. A classical Feng Shui practitioner doesn't tell someone a home is a lost cause -- whether they're deciding whether to buy it or have already lived there for years -- they explain what's going on and how to improve the energy flow from there. That's exactly how ProperQi is built too: every score leads with what's already working in a home's favor, and a lower score points to what a simple, traditional adjustment (or a consultation) could improve -- never a reason to rule a home out, and never a reason to think a home you already own can't be improved.
"Ancient wisdom, held to modern standards."
Two traditions, three tools, each named explicitly and never blended. Feng ShuiFeng Shui Pronounced "fung-shway." A centuries-old Chinese practice for reading how a building's shape, layout, and orientation interact with the people living in it. "Feng Shui" literally translates to "wind-water" -- the idea that a home sits inside a flow of natural forces the same way it sits inside actual wind and water, and that arranging a home thoughtfully within that flow matters. The older of Feng Shui's two major traditions, focused on the physical shape of a site itself -- nearby water, hills, roads, and the building's own shape. FengShuiIQ's free and Expanded ProperQi™ Score are built on Form School principles applied to real map data. The other major tradition, focused on precise compass directions and how they interact with a specific person (via their Kua number) or a specific point in time (via systems like Flying Star). ProperQi™ Match, the Bagua overlay, Tai Sui/Sui Po, and Flying Star are all Compass School methods.
Our other two tools each go deeper into one specific tradition instead of blending, and each names its own methodology on its own report rather than presenting everything as one undifferentiated "Feng Shui score." The $29 Floor Plan ProperQi™ Score uses BTBBTB Short for Black Sect Tantric Buddhist Form School -- the specific tradition behind the $29 Floor Plan ProperQi™ Score. Unlike the whole-home Bagua used on ProperQi™ Match (oriented to true compass directions -- see "Bagua" above), BTB orients its nine-zone grid to your floor plan's own front-door wall, no compass reading needed. It's Form School, not Compass School (see both above), and reads a floor plan's fixed room layout rather than any one person's directions. A number from 1 to 9 (skipping 5, which redirects to 2 or 8 -- see below) calculated from your birth year and sex. It's the starting point for your entire Eight Mansions reading -- everything else in this section is derived from it. A Compass School system that reads a home's energy as changing over time, based on when it was built and which way it faces -- distinct from Eight Mansions, which is fixed to a person rather than a point in time. An 8-sided (plus center) map of a home's overall footprint, where each of the 8 outer sectors corresponds to a different life area -- wealth, relationships, career, and so on. FengShuiIQ divides a home's footprint into a 3-by-3 grid using true compass directions to check how completely each sector is actually built out.
Every ProperQi™ Score starts from a base of 70 points. Each factor below adds or subtracts from there based on what's actually near the address.
Water
ClassicalThe classical Form School ideal is a home "backed by mountain, faced by water." Water sitting in front of or near a property is traditionally associated with the gathering of wealth and opportunity. We check for real, mapped water features near an address and score them by distance, with flowing water (rivers, streams) weighted slightly higher than still water (ponds, lakes) since moving water is traditionally read as more dynamic.
Earns points
- A real lake, pond, reservoir, river, or stream within roughly 600m
- Closer, larger water features score higher than distant ones
Never counted
- Swimming pools (see "What doesn't score" below)
- Drainage ditches, which are infrastructure, not a real water feature
- Intermittent or seasonal streams, not reliably "water near the site" most of the year
- Water too small or too close to plausibly be anything but a private feature
Green space
ClassicalParks, woods, and open natural land are read as supportive, nurturing chiQi Pronounced "chee." The life energy or vital force Feng Shui treats as flowing through a home the way air or water does -- gathering in some spots, rushing through others, and getting blocked in others still. Most of what Feng Shui actually recommends is really about helping qi gather and circulate gently, rather than rushing straight through a space or stagnating in a corner.
Earns points
- Public parks, playing fields, and wooded areas nearby
- Distance-weighted: closer is better, up to the 450m cutoff
Never counted
- Private residential gardens and other private-access land, not genuinely open green space
- Hard-surface sport courts (tennis, basketball, and similar), built infrastructure, not natural land
- Features too small to plausibly read as real open green space
Hazards
ClassicalCertain nearby features are treated as sources of sha chi, disruptive or negative energy. Not every hazard type is equally severe: we weigh each one by both how disruptive it's generally considered and how close it is, so a landfill 100m away costs far more than a hospital 400m away.
| Hazard | Relative severity | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Landfill | Highest | Persistent, physical source of disruption. Checked against public map tags plus (for California addresses) the state's own CalRecycle landfill registry, so an active site missing from map data still gets caught. |
| Power substation | Very high | Concentrated electromagnetic & visual disruption |
| Prison | High | Strong traditional association with confinement/distress |
| Refinery | High | An active petroleum refinery is a heavier, more persistent physical and industrial presence than ordinary industrial land |
| Airport / Cemetery / Oil & gas industrial site | Moderate | Noise (airport), traditional stillness/loss association (cemetery), or a broader oil-industry parcel not specific enough to call a refinery |
| Oil & gas well or platform | Moderate-lower | A single wellhead, pumpjack, or platform, smaller-footprint than a refinery but still a real industrial hazard |
| Industrial land / Power line | Lower | Noise, traffic & visual disruption for industrial land, moderated after real-world feedback showed it was being over-weighted, especially when the "industrial" parcel turns out to be a parking lot. Power lines are common infrastructure most homes are near regardless, and are now weighted the same. |
| Hospital | Low | Softened deliberately, since a hospital is a place of care, not purely a negative site |
| Helipad | Lowest | Distinguished from a full commercial airport: occasional helicopter noise, not sustained air-traffic exposure |
| Unidentified flagged feature | Moderate (default) | Something in the map data is tagged as a hazard type we don't yet specifically recognize, counted at a moderate default severity rather than silently ignored |
When the closest hazard is genuinely severe, two additional rules apply, both shown directly on your result rather than adjusted silently behind the scenes. A severity ceiling caps how high the overall score can go: a landfill next door shouldn't be offset back to "Balanced" just because the same lot happens to back onto a nice patch of green space. And nearby positive factors are muted, not zeroed: water, green space, terrain, and similar readings are still credited near a severe hazard, just at a reduced strength, since classical Form School treats a serious source of sha chi as coloring the whole site's read rather than something unrelated positives can freely cancel out. Both effects only kick in near a genuinely serious hazard, and both are labeled explicitly in your results when they apply.
Road exposure
ClassicalWe check real road geometry around the property: whether a road runs straight at the house, whether multiple roads genuinely converge nearby (a true intersection, not just two streets that happen to both be close by), and whether the road curves or is straight. A road aimed straight at a home is one classical warning sign this looks for -- see Poison Arrows in the Expanded tier below for the precise, geometry-based version of that specific "poison arrow" pattern, scored as its own standalone factor.
Earns points
- A winding or curved road, which deflects rather than channels energy
- Normal, ordinary street frontage with no direct alignment
Costs points
- A straight road aimed directly at the front of the home
- Genuine multi-road convergence (a real corner or busy intersection)
Terrain
ClassicalThe other half of "backed by mountain, faced by water": a property with rising ground behind it is traditionally read as protected and supported, while a home perched with a steep drop-off behind it lacks that backing. We check real elevation data around the address to estimate this.
Direction
SimplifiedCompass-based Feng Shui is traditionally a deep, resident-specific practice (see Numerology and our ProperQi™ Match tier, $49). What we offer here is a simplified estimate of which way the home faces, inferred from the nearest road's bearing when no explicit facing direction is provided. Treat this as a general read, not a Kua-number-level analysis.
Schools
Practical additionThis one is honest about not being classical Feng Shui: it's a practical, modern addition, since proximity to good schools is a real factor in most people's home decisions and a traditional (if informal) association with a family-supportive neighborhood. Multiple nearby schools each contribute, with diminishing weight after the first.
Flood zone
Practical additionAnother honest departure from classical Feng Shui, and a purely practical one: we check the address against FEMA's official National Flood Hazard Layer, the same public flood-zone mapping used for insurance and building decisions across the U.S. A confirmed high-risk zone (any zone code starting with A or V, FEMA's own naming convention for a "Special Flood Hazard Area") is a meaningful, negative-leaning fact about a site, in the same spirit as the classical caution against building somewhere prone to water damage. Being in a lower-risk mapped zone contributes a small, modest positive, since being outside a flood zone is the ordinary baseline for most homes, not a standout advantage the way genuinely favorable siting is.
Earns points
- Confirmed in a lower-risk FEMA zone (e.g. Zone X)
Loses points
- Confirmed in a high-risk Special Flood Hazard Area (any A- or V-prefixed zone)
If FEMA hasn't published effective flood mapping for a given area, or the lookup can't be reached, we say so plainly and leave this factor neutral. We'd rather flag a real data gap than guess at "safe."
Numeric Address
ClassicalA small, separate 1–5 rating based on Chinese numerological tradition, not a universal Feng Shui principle but a widely recognized cultural one. Certain digits carry auspicious or inauspicious associations from how they sound in Mandarin/Cantonese: a house number ending in 8 (a homophone for prosperity) is favorable, while one ending in 4 (a homophone for death) is traditionally avoided. This rating is shown separately and is not included in the main score above.
Composite balancing
How the math worksWe cap how far the core site factors, taken together, are allowed to swing a score in either direction, so one especially lopsided address doesn't produce a number that reads as more extreme than the tool is actually built to claim. When that cap changes how much any individual factor contributes, we redistribute the difference across the other factors rather than just chopping the total, but a factor is never pushed past its own zero point in the process. If a small remainder is still left over after that redistribution, it shows up as an explicit "Composite balancing adjustment" line in your results, folded into the total, rather than quietly rounded away. It's usually zero, and small when it isn't, shown so the displayed total always reconciles with the visible factors above it, the same "shown, never silent" principle applied everywhere else on this page.
Junction Type
A refinement of the Free tier's Road exposure read: instead of just checking for a straight road nearby, this classifies exactly what kind of junction is closest -- clear through-street frontage, a normal side-street junction, a cul-de-sac bulb, or a T-junction/dead-end (the pattern most classical sources treat as most severe, since a road effectively terminates pointed straight at the property).
Poison Arrows
A precise, standalone version of one specific pattern from the Free tier's Road exposure check above: whether a road's straight final approach, extended forward, runs essentially right at the property -- the classic "poison arrow" (sha chi) pattern, read as a rush of aggressive energy aimed at the home rather than gently dispersed. This is scored independently using the road's actual topology, not a repeat of the Free tier's general road-exposure score -- Road exposure looks at overall road geometry near the property, while this factor isolates and precisely measures that one specific alignment pattern on its own.
See also: general poison-arrow and T-junction guidance in our Feng Shui observations reference.
Slope Direction
A precision version of the Free tier's Terrain factor: instead of a coarse elevation check, this reads the real ground-slope gradient around the address against its facing direction, to tell whether the land rises supportively behind the home (the classical "armchair" backing) or rises in front of it instead.
Water-Flow Direction
Adds a San He Compass School read on top of the Free tier's Water factor: for the nearest river or stream, whether it flows toward the property or away from it. Classical San He practice treats flowing water as carrying "wealth chi" -- flow moving toward a home is read as the more favorable direction.
Building Shape
Measures the actual building footprint against a simple convex shape -- an L-shape, a missing cornerMissing corner What it's called when a home's footprint doesn't substantially fill one of the Bagua's 8 outer sectors -- not a fixed flaw, just something worth being aware of for that sector's life area. Shown on a ProperQi™ Match report as an advisory note, separate from your percentage score. An 8-sided (plus center) map of a home's overall footprint, where each of the 8 outer sectors corresponds to a different life area -- wealth, relationships, career, and so on. FengShuiIQ divides a home's footprint into a 3-by-3 grid using true compass directions to check how completely each sector is actually built out.
See also: general guidance on missing-corner floor plans in our Feng Shui observations reference.
Lot Shape Regularity
The one Expanded factor built on paid parcel-boundary data (Regrid) rather than free public sources. Checks the actual lot for irregularity (a notched or oddly-cut boundary) and elongation (a long, narrow "flag" lot vs. a balanced one) -- a clean, regular lot is traditionally favorable, since chi is thought to move and settle more evenly across it than an oddly-cut one.
Precision Facing
Not a separately scored line -- this sharpens the same facing-direction estimate the Free tier's Direction factor uses, moving from a simple 8-point compass read toward a full 24 Mountains (二十四山) bearing when there's enough data to support it. Slope Direction, Water-Flow Direction, and Kua Direction Compatibility below all depend on this more precise facing to work correctly.
Kua Direction Compatibility
The one genuinely personal factor in the Expanded tier -- every factor above describes the site the same way for everyone; this one reads the property's facing direction against a specific resident, via their classical Kua number (from birth year and calculation choice, per Eight MansionsEight Mansions A classical Compass School method that sorts everyone into one of eight personal directions of best and worst fit, based on a number calculated from their birth year and sex. It's the system behind ProperQi™ Match's per-person readings and the Expanded tier's Kua Direction Compatibility factor.
Why your ProperQi™ Score can change
A ProperQi™ Score isn't a one-time stamp. It's a read of real, current map data, and that data isn't frozen. Check the same address again, whether months later or minutes later, and the number can move, for a few honest reasons, not because we're trying to sell you a different answer:
- The site itself can genuinely change. A new hazard opens nearby, FEMA remaps a flood zone, a park or school opens or closes; the property didn't move, but what's actually around it did.
- We improve the methodology. As we refine how the score is computed, the underlying engine version changes, and every score is tagged with the engine version that produced it, so nothing shifts silently or unexplained.
- A live data fetch can occasionally come back incomplete, then complete on the next try. A few factors, Road exposure especially, plus the Direction estimate that partly leans on nearby road frontage, depend on querying OpenStreetMap's live road-network data for that specific spot at the moment you check, not a static snapshot. Like any public data service, that query can occasionally return a partial result under load. We treat a partial read differently from the two reasons above: it's never saved as the address's stored result, specifically so that checking again shortly after, even just a few minutes later, has a real chance of pulling a complete read once the data service responds normally (or, less often, the other way around). This is the most common reason two checks minutes apart can land on different numbers, and it isn't a sign anything changed about the property itself. Water, green space, hazards, schools, terrain, and the flood-zone check draw from steadier sources and don't fluctuate this way.
Neither of the first two reasons means an earlier score was wrong; it reflected what was true and knowable at the time. This is different from something like a credit score, which moves because of what you do; nothing in a ProperQi™ Score today changes because of an action you personally take. Treat it as a point-in-time read of a changing world: useful now, worth rechecking before a major decision.
One more distinction worth being upfront about: remedies don't move the number. Deeper tiers may suggest traditional remedies for certain factors, such as landscaping to screen a sharp angle, furniture placement within a room's energy zone, and similar. Following that advice is worthwhile on its own traditional terms, but it won't change your ProperQi™ Score, because the underlying site facts it's read from (the angle of the road, the shape of the building) haven't changed, and nothing here re-scans a property to check. A remedy addresses the traditional energetic reading of a fixed condition; it isn't a way to raise a number. We'd rather the score stay an honest, unpurchasable read of the property than let it become something you can check boxes to inflate.
What doesn't move the ProperQi™ Score
Just as important as what earns points is what we deliberately exclude, either because it isn't genuinely relevant or because our data sources can't reliably tell it apart from something that is.
Where this tool falls short, on purpose, said out loud
We'd rather be upfront about the limits of an automated ProperQi™ Score than let it pretend to be more certain than it is:
- The underlying map data can be wrong or incomplete. We rely on crowdsourced and commercial map data, which occasionally misses features or mislabels them. We build in cross-checks where we can, but we can't catch every gap.
- Feng Shui itself involves judgment. Real practitioners weigh nuance, context, and a site's specific history in ways a rules-based score can't fully replicate.
- This isn't personalized by default. The Basic ProperQi™ Score describes the property, not the people living in it. Expanded adds seven more site-level factors plus one optional personalized one (Kua Direction Compatibility, based on your birth year and gender); everything else stays site-only. Full personalization, meaning every resident's own Eight Mansions reading, a Flying Star read, room-by-room matching, and where a household's energy overlaps, is what our ProperQi™ Match tier ($49) is for, with a $29 Floor Plan save for the same home included at no extra charge so room-by-room matching is never a separate purchase.
- A high ProperQi™ Score isn't a guarantee, and a low one isn't a dealbreaker. Treat every result as one well-informed input among many for a decision that's ultimately yours.
This is exactly why we offer more than one tier: each additional layer, whether expanded scoring, floor plan analysis, or a personal reading, exists to give you more to understand about an address, whether you're weighing it or already living there, not to hand you a single "correct" verdict.
"Confidence, yes. Certainty, never."
Curious how the paid tiers build on everything above?
See pricing & what's included →