To Bring Feng Shui Into Your Bedroom, You’ll Want to Avoid Putting Your Bed in the ‘Coffin Position’

How feng shui affects bed positioning

Ideally, you spend lots of time in your bed sleeping. This is why its position is so key in feng shui, and why it’s worth spending some time getting the placement right. “Your bed is an important place in your home because it represents you,” says Anjie Cho, certified feng shui consultant, architect, and author of Holistic Spaces: 108 Ways to Create a Mindful and Peaceful Home. Lying between those sheets is how you rest and recharge, so it’s important that this key piece of furniture is in a spot that supports that.

So how do you find that placement? When you consider any space, you are thinking about how the qi—the invisible, life force energy that affects you physically, mentally, and spiritually—flows into a room. It comes in through the door, says Cho, so it’s most important to consider the bed's placement in relation to any doors.

Why—and how—to place your bed in a commanding position

A feng shui bed position that allows for the greatest flow of qi is a commanding position, which is the ideal placement, according to Cho. “When you’re laying in bed, ideally you want to be able to see the door without directly being in line with the door,” she says. While the bed's relationship relative to the door is the most important factor to consider, there are some other elements that inform the commanding position, too. Ideally, the headboard should be against a solid wall, which according to Cho is "like having the support of a mountain behind you," and there should be space on both sides of the bed, as well as at the foot for balance.

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If it isn’t possible to place your bed in a commanding position, one corrective measure Cho recommends is positioning a mirror so you can see the door in its reflection while you lie in bed—the key thing is to have visibility from your bed to the door, and the mirror helps achieve this. Try an adjustable standing mirror, and play with it until you find the right angle. Of course, the unique architecture of your bedroom dictates how possible it is to follow all these guidelines—Cho says to just do the best you can with what you have. If you focus on one aspect of bed positioning, make sure it's the bed's relationship to the door.

One bed position to avoid as much as possible?

That would be the coffin position, which is when a bed is placed so the feet of the person in it directly face the door. Because qi comes in through the door, the coffin position leaves you exposed to all the energy entering the room, says Laura Cerrano, certified feng shui consultant and founder of Feng Shui Manhattan, which means your mind and body aren’t fully supported as you sleep. This vulnerable position isn’t conducive to rest because “the energy comes through the door and straight at you,” says Cho. “It’s like an arrow pointing at you, and it’s a strong amount of energy that doesn’t have a chance to flow and move into the room.”

Other feng shui bed placement mistakes to avoid

Putting your bed where you can't see the door

Just as you want to avoid being right in front of the door, you don’t want to place your bed in a spot where you can’t see it, or where you’d have to turn your body around to look at the entry way to your bedroom.  This creates the opposite problem of the coffin position—it's a weak energy position. So while you don't want to be perfectly aligned with the door, you need it in your sightline for optimal flow.

Putting your bed against a window

Avoid covering a window with your headboard, or placing your bed so the window is directly in front or behind you. Windows aren't the same as doors in feng shui, and the windows don't have to do with the coffin position, but Cerrano says that facing away from the window as you sleep leaves you vulnerable and that it's better to be able to see what's happening. “If you can move the bed away from the window that would be ideal,” says Cerrano. “Any time you have an exposure that leads beyond the containment of that bedroom [like a window], there’s a possibility of not feeling as relaxed when you’re sleeping,” she says.

It’s better to have windows off to the side versus directly in front of or behind the bed, but if you can’t avoid it Cerrano recommends at least using curtains to soften the space. “What we say in modern day feng shui is that doors let energy in and windows let energy out, so that can be another way of describing why we don’t want our feet by the window if it can be avoided because that’s encouraging that energy to easily leave,” she explains.