Guides · Reading · 12 min read · Updated September 2026

A flat, read from start to finish

Every essay on the site describes a piece of a reading; this guide does one whole. A corner flat on the seventh floor, two occupants born in 1979 and 1984, a balcony facing east at eighty-eight degrees, a block finished in 2025. The brief, the street, the door, the rooms, the compass, the kua of both, the Period 9 chart and what it says, the findings in order of weight, the remedies in order of cost, and the page the household is handed at the end.

Oriented NW 297°

Metal

Fig. 01 A plan and a pencil. A reading ends on a page like this one, with the facing in degrees, the sectors drawn and the findings in order.

The site has spent eighty articles taking a reading apart, and this guide puts one back together. It follows a single flat through the order a classical consultation keeps, which the hiring a practitioner guide gives and the in a day guide adapts for a household on its own: the brief at the table, the street, the compass on the threshold, the rooms with the plan in hand, and the written page at the end. The flat is invented and the numbers are real; every step is one the essays explain, and the links say where. A reader who follows it through has done a reading, and can do the next one on their own plan.

The brief, and the street

The household is two people, a man born in 1979 and a woman born in 1984, moving into a corner flat on the seventh floor of a block finished in 2025, nine metres by seven, entered from a corridor on its west side, with a balcony on the east and windows east and south. They sleep badly, work from home two days a week, and want to know where the bed and the desk go before the furniture arrives. That is the brief, and it already fixes three things the reading will need: the years of birth, which the Compass schools turn into a kua each and the Form school never asks for; the year the block was finished, which sets the Flying Stars period, Period 9, since 2025 falls after February 2024; and the questions, sleep and work, which put the bed and the desk at the head of the report. Then the street, walked before the lift is called. The block stands with a lower building behind it to the west and open ground to the east, which is the four animals at the scale of a block, the back protected and the front open; the road runs past the east front and curves away from it rather than toward it, so the balcony faces the outside of a bend, which the sha catalogue names as the reverse bow, and a lamp standard stands on the pavement opposite the balcony, thirty metres off and small at that distance. The choosing a flat guide reads the tower and the floor plate; the seventh floor is above the road’s noise and below the wind, the lift lobby is not opposite the door, and the refuse room is at the corridor’s far end. The street’s finding is one line for the report: the balcony faces a bend’s outside and a lamp, which a planter and a hedge on the parapet will soften, and nothing else.

The door, the compass and the rooms

A The door’s line runs to the balcony · B The bed’s head under the east window
C The stove in view of the front door · in each sector, its mountain and water stars

Plan 01 The flat, read The flat of the worked reading: a corner flat of nine metres by seven on the seventh floor, entered from a corridor on the west and facing east over a balcony, with windows east and south. The eight sectors are drawn from the balance point of the plan, and each carries the two stars of its palace from the Period 9 chart, the mountain star first and the water star second, so that the plan and the chart can be read together: the double 9 at the eastern facing, the 5 in the west at the door and the 5 in the north-east at the kitchen, the 8 and 1 in the two bedrooms. The three faults the Form reading found are marked. A: the front door’s line runs through the hall and the living room to the balcony door, the through-house. B: the bed in the east bedroom lies with its head under the window and its feet to the door. C: the stove is in view of the front door through the kitchen’s open side. The remedies for all three cost a screen, a bed turned and a half-height counter.

The compass is set on the threshold, away from the steel of the door frame and the lift, and the facing is taken from the balcony front, which the facing direction guide explains is the side the flat opens to, not the side the corridor door is on: eighty-eight degrees, read twice, which is E2 on the luopan’s twenty-four mountains, the middle mountain of the east, and puts the sitting at W2. Then the plan. The balance point of the rectangle is its centre, and the eight sectors are drawn from it as the drawing your plan guide shows; the drawing above carries them, each with the two stars of its palace from the chart built below. Then the rooms, walked with the plan, and the Form reading finds three things, marked on the plan. The front door opens onto a hall whose line runs straight across the living room to the balcony door, the through-house, chuan tang, which the front door guide calls the fault most often found and most cheaply fixed. The bed the household has sketched in the east bedroom lies with its head under the window and its feet toward the door, which fails two of the three conditions of the command position. And the kitchen, open on its hall side, shows its stove to the front door, which the kitchen page gives as the tradition’s objection to a hob in the line of the entrance. The bath is internal, in the north of the plan, and the second bedroom in the south-west has a south window and a solid wall on its north side. That is the Form reading, and it is most of the report.

Design observation · What a designer would say instead

A designer walking the same flat writes the same three findings in another vocabulary. The hall’s line to the balcony is a room without an entrance transition, which Alexander’s pattern language corrects with a screen or a turn; the bed under the window is a sleeper with a cold surface and a light source at the head and the door behind, which the sleep research corrects by moving the bed to the solid wall; the stove in view of the door is a kitchen without a threshold, which a half-height counter gives it. The internal bath wants an extractor and a shut door, which the air guide gives the reason for. The two readings differ on the chart and nowhere else, and the household can act on the three findings before it decides what it thinks of the chart.

The kua, the chart and what it says

Fig. 02 The chart of the flat: Period 9, because the block was finished in 2025, sitting W2 and facing E2, because the compass read the balcony front at eighty-eight degrees. It is built by the rules the Flying Stars essay gives: 9 at the centre flown forward gives the period stars; the period star in the sitting palace, 2, becomes the mountain star and flies forward because the second mountain of the Kun palace is yang; the period star in the facing palace, 7, becomes the water star and flies backward because the second mountain of the Dui palace, You, is yin. In each palace the mountain star stands at the top left, the water star at the top right and the period star below. The result is the chart the school calls double stars at the facing, both 9s at the balcony: wealth strong and people in need of a hill behind them, which is what the readings on the right make of it, palace by palace, in the order of weight the report uses. The chart is the school’s and the site records it as such; the readings are the standard ones from the practitioner manuals. What in them can be tested is the advice about the bath, the stove and the bed, and that advice is the same the room guides give without a chart.

The Compass reading adds two things, and the site labels both as the schools’. The kua of the occupants first, by the rule the Eight Mansions essay gives: 1979 reduces to eight, and the man, subtracting from eleven, is kua three, Zhen, of the East group; 1984 reduces to four, and the woman, adding four, is kua eight, Gen, of the West group. The flat sits W2, in the Dui palace, a West-group house: it suits her and not him, which is the ordinary case of a mixed couple and the essay gives the school’s answer, that the bed goes to the sleeper who sleeps worse and the door is read for the one who leaves first. His four good directions are the eastern four, east, south-east, south and north; hers are the western four, west, north-west, south-west and north-east. Then the chart. The block is Period 9, the facing is E2, and the chart is built by the rules the Flying Stars essay sets out, whose chart builder will draw it for any house, and the drawing above shows: 9 at the centre flown forward for the period stars; the period star in the sitting palace, 2, taken as the mountain star and flown forward because the second mountain of Kun is yang; the period star in the facing palace, 7, taken as the water star and flown backward because You, the second mountain of Dui, is yin. The result is the chart the school calls double stars at the facing: the ruling 9 as both mountain and water star in the east, at the balcony, which the manuals read as wealth strong and people wanting a hill behind them, and the balcony’s parapet and a sofa with its back to the room’s west wall are the hill. The 5 falls in the west at the door and in the north-east at the kitchen, and the school wants both quiet and the stove clean; the 8 and 1 fall in the south-west bedroom, the best pair in the flat for rest; the 2 falls in the north, on the internal bath, and the school says to keep its door shut, which the bathroom page said already. The chart, read palace by palace on the drawing, agrees with the Form reading on where the bed goes, which it usually does, and adds nothing the Form reading contradicts.

Evidence · Which findings have evidence, and which are the school’s

Of the report’s findings, three rest on research the site cites elsewhere and the rest on the schools. The bed’s move to a solid wall with the door in view is the command-position finding, and the sleep and stress literature supports its conditions; the bath’s extractor and shut door are the damp and air findings, with the World Health Organization behind them; the balcony’s hedge against the road is a noise and view finding, and Basner’s review of noise and Evans’s of housing support it. The through-house, the stove’s line and the chart are the tradition’s, and the site records them as such: the first two are cheap and harmless and the household can keep them; the chart is the Compass school’s and the household can take it or leave it, knowing that the room it puts the bed in is the room the Form reading chose without it.

The report, in order

The facing. E2, eighty-eight degrees, taken from the balcony front on the threshold, twice; the sitting W2; the block Period 9. The plan with its eight sectors from the centre, attached.
The bed. To the south-west bedroom, head on its north wall, the door seen at a diagonal; it is the sleeper’s finding, the Form school’s and the chart’s, and the one that answers the brief.
The desk. In the south-west bedroom’s east corner or the second bedroom, with the wall behind and the door in view; facing east for her, which the flat allows, and the west for him, which the second room allows.
The door’s line. A screen or a console with a plant two metres inside the hall, so that the line to the balcony is turned; the cheapest finding and the first done.
The stove. A half-height counter on the kitchen’s open side; the hob clean and the extractor used, which the chart’s 5 and the air guide ask for alike.
The bath. Extractor on a timer, door shut, the room dry; the 2 in the north and the damp guidance say the same.
The balcony. A planter and a hedge on the parapet against the lamp and the bend, set at the seated eye rather than the standing one, which the balcony guide draws; the sofa with its back to the west wall so that the room has its hill.
What cannot be fixed. Nothing in this flat; the report says so, which is what the household paid to hear.