When does a house feel right? Sizing up feng shui guide ’Secrets of the Feel-Good Home’
The cliché goes that most people have ‘bought’ their house before they step inside, says Susan Swire, in her book
It’s a feeling we all know, where instantly we sense that something is right or wrong for us; it rests in the gut and is always spot on, even if we dismiss it in the interests of so-called practicality, but often in hindsight we realise we should have trusted it.
Tapping into this gut feeling when putting a home together is at the heart of this book, so it’s different from many of the home interior coffee table tomes which are high on production value and presentation, while filled with beautiful photography and poetically crafted sentences to inspire the reader. They also tend to be trend-led, but new trends in interiors rain on us as relentlessly as a wet Irish summer and then evaporate overnight.
Secrets of the Feel-Good Home is designed like a paper-back novel, making it easy to curl up with. The author relies solely on written content to engage the reader without a single diagram, illustration or aspirational photograph. Instead, 250 pages of text deal with every aspect of a house, from its kerb appeal to the cubby hole under the stairs.
Divided into chapters which end with notes directing the reader to books for further reading and explanations of concepts with practical advice, each one focuses on achieving a feeling that works for you, rather than the application of a new fashion.
Fundamental to all of it is the author’s training in feng shui, presented in a way that’s accessible for western home makers. Now this has been tried before when feng shui became mainstream more than 20 years ago, but the way in which it was simplified back then, and sometimes made simplistic, meant feng shui came down largely, to the notion that if you throw out all your excess stuff, put your furniture in certain configurations and hung a few wind chimes, then you were on your way to a win in the lottery.
It was like a fast food approach to a very in-depth philosophy — easy to digest but not good in the long-term. Admittedly, this wasn’t helped by many of the authentic Chinese practitioners’ books on the subject, which were wonderful but sometimeswith instructions difficult to apply to western architecture and space planning.
Susan Swire’s approach takes us back to feng shui’s origins, to what makes up a feeling about a house or place, its location and layout, and how to tap into this by applying ancient rules of geometry like the Golden Mean, which forms the design of some of the most famous buildings in existence.
But while drawing on all this ancient, tried and tested design wisdom, her exploration and application of it is right up to date, based on western culture too and its love of new trends for décor and home improvement. The result is a combination of what both systems have to offer, helping to stimulate the feeling of a great location even if you don’t live in one right now; sensing and directing energy and showing you how to work with light and shade to create the home you want, inside and out.
So while our cultural conditioning makes us lean towards ever-shifting design advice, and there’s nothing wrong with that — it’s fun and refreshing, the author emphasises that only you know your home intimately.
You along know how the light falls at different times of the day, how the layout serves you and what you need or just long for in your environment. Go only with what you feel and love, she says, using her book as and when, to guide you, but above all use your instincts.
The downside of this book is it lacks an index for easy reference necessitating a speed read through an entire chapter to find a particular point. But it’s a small complaint about a book that, unlike others, won’t be consigned to the charity shop box.
Secrets of the Feel-Good Home costs €11.99 at www.amazon.com
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