Guides · Building · 13 min read · Updated September 2026

Building and renovating

The one time the tradition’s rules for a site, a plan and a door can still be followed rather than worked around. The order of decisions from the ground to the paint, what the tradition asks at each and what it costs to undo, the rites the builders kept, the days the almanac gives, and what a renovation can and cannot reach.

Oriented NE 051°

Earth

Fig. 01 A wooden wall, perforated. A house is decided from the ground up, and the tradition’s order is the builder’s.

Every other guide on this site takes the house as it is and moves the furniture. This one is for the moment the walls are not yet fixed: a house being built, an extension, a flat being gutted. It is the only time the tradition’s rules about the site, the shape of the plan, the door and the stairs can be followed instead of worked around, and the tradition, which was written by people who sited and built houses rather than decorated them, has an order for it. The order is the builder’s too, from the ground up, and each rung costs more to undo than the one below.

The order of decisions

Fig. 01 The order of decisions when building or renovating, as the tradition reads a house and as the builder has to make them: from the site, which cannot be changed, down to the finishes, which can be changed in an afternoon. The bar beside each rung is how hard the decision is to undo once made, and it shortens as the ladder descends. The site and the facing are the two the classics are about and the two nobody can revisit; the shape of the plan, the door and the position of the stairs and the wet rooms are structural and cost a wall or a drain to move; the bedrooms and the kitchen are partitions and services; the finishes are paint. A renovation joins the ladder wherever the walls allow and works downward; a new build starts at the top, and a client who brings a consultant in at the finishes has asked for help with the one rung that did not need it. The rungs are the site’s reading of the classics’ order, the five steps of the landform school at the top and the yang-house manuals’ door, stair and stove in the middle, with the modern finishes at the foot. The bars are a judgement of cost, not a measurement.

The ladder runs from what cannot be changed to what can be changed in an afternoon. The site and the facing are the two decisions the classics are about and the two nobody revisits: the choosing a home guide gives the five steps of the site reading and the facing guide gives the bearing, which comes last in the reading and first in the building. The shape of the plan, the door and the position of the stairs and the wet rooms are structural, and cost a wall, a lintel or a drain to move. The bedrooms and the kitchen are partitions and services. The finishes are paint. A new build starts at the top of the ladder; a renovation joins it wherever the walls allow and works down; and a client who brings a consultant in at the finishes has asked for help with the one rung that did not need it.

The site and the facing

What the tradition asks of the ground is in the outside page and the yin house essay: the house with rising ground or a wall behind it, open ground and the road across the front rather than at it, the far corner where the ground falls planted, nothing aimed at the door. A plot that allows it is sited with the house toward the back and the open ground in front; a plot that does not is read for which side is the open one, and that side becomes the facing whatever the street does. The facing decides where the main windows and the door go, and the directions pages say what each facing does to the light of the rooms behind it: a south facing gives the living rooms the sun and the bedrooms behind them the shade, which is the classical arrangement and the reason for it.

The plan

The tradition wants a plan close to a rectangle, with no missing corner beside the door, a centre that is open and not a bathroom or a stair, and the bedrooms at the far end from the entrance. At the drawing-board stage all of it is free. The bagua essay explains the missing corner and the bedroom page the gradient from the door to the bed; the point here is only that a plan drawn with the door at one end and the bedrooms at the other, the stair off the line of the door and the bathrooms against an outside wall, has satisfied most of the tradition before a wall is built. The English space standard gives the minimums the plan must also satisfy, and they do not conflict: a hall ninety centimetres wide, a double bedroom of eleven and a half square metres, ceilings of two metres thirty over most of the floor.

Structure and services

Beams, columns and the runs of the drains are decided with the structure, and the tradition’s objections to them are the ones that cost most to meet later. A beam across the room where the bed will go is a beam for the life of the house; a bulkhead over the kitchen worktop is a beam over the cook; a column in the living room is a wall blade at somebody’s shoulder. At the drawing-board stage the beams can be run along the rooms rather than across them, the columns put in the corners, and the drains, which fix where the bathrooms and the kitchen sink can be, run to the outside walls so that the wet rooms stay off the centre and away from the front door. The beams and corners guide gives the remedies for a house where this was not done; a house where it was needs none.

Fig. 02 One flat, its structure decided twice. On the left the beams are run on the lines of the walls, so no room has one across it; the columns are kept in the corners, where a wall already turns; and the drains are taken to the outside wall, which puts the bathroom on the perimeter and the kitchen sink beside it. On the right the same flat with the three decisions taken later: a beam crosses the bedroom where the bed's head will go and another crosses the kitchen over the worktop, a column stands free in the living room at somebody's shoulder, and the drains run to a stack in the middle, which lands the bathroom in the centre of the plan. The rooms and the furniture are identical in both. The beams are drawn dashed because they are overhead, not on the floor; the drain run is the dotted line. The tradition's objections — a beam over the bed, a blade at the shoulder, the wet room in the centre — are the three this drawing is about, and each is met here by a line on a structural drawing rather than by a remedy later. What a renovation can still reach is the subject of the next drawing.

The rooms

With the walls fixed, the rooms follow the pages for each: the bedroom with a solid wall for the bed, the door in view from the pillow and the window at the side; the kitchen with the stove off the door’s line and a metre from the sink, the cook facing the room, an extractor that vents outside; the living room with a wall for the sofa that sees the door; the desk with the window at its side. The partitions are the last structural decision and the cheapest, and a plan that has kept the bedroom wall solid where the bed goes and the kitchen’s services where the stove can face the room has made the furniture pages easy.

School · The day, the ruler and the compass

The schools add their instruments at three points on the ladder. The day: ground is broken, the roof raised, the door hung and the house moved into on days the almanac gives, and the choosing a day essay gives the officers and the directions to avoid. The ruler: the clear openings of the doors are set on the Lu Ban ruler, which the front door guide draws with four widths marked. The compass: the facing is read on the earth plate of the luopan for the Eight Mansions and Flying Star methods, whose charts depend on it and on the year of completion, and a practitioner who is to draw a chart wants to be told the facing before the plan is fixed, not after. None of the three is classical in the sense the site reserves the word for; all three are what a Chinese builder did.

What a renovation can reach

A renovation joins the ladder where the walls allow. A flat being gutted can move partitions, and so can reach the bedrooms, the kitchen and the line from the door; it cannot move the front door, the stair or the drains without the building’s consent, and it cannot move the facing at all. The useful test is the bar beside each rung: everything below the level of the structure is the renovation’s, and everything above it is the building’s. Where the structure has already put a beam over the bed or a stair on the threshold, the renovation’s job is the remedy, hide, turn, move, and the pages for each fault give the order.

Evidence · What the research says to build

None of the research is about feng shui and most of it is about the things the top rungs decide. Daylight and a view from the rooms people use, orientation that gives the winter sun and shades the summer, ventilation that works, night noise below forty decibels outside the bedroom window, which is the guideline’s annual average and not a level indoors, ceilings and rooms at or above the space standard, and an entrance that is visible from the street and marked off from it: Evans’s review of housing and mental health, the WHO guidelines and Newman’s study of thresholds between them describe a house the tradition would also have built, and every one of their variables is fixed above the level of the partitions. A renovation that cannot reach them is not a failure; it is a reason to weigh the top of the ladder at the viewing.

The reach, by job

Fig. 03 What each kind of job can reach. The site’s items as rows, ordered from the easiest to the hardest to change, and the kinds of work as columns, from a weekend with paint to a new build; a filled mark where the job can change the item, a half mark where it can partly or with the building’s consent, a dot where it cannot. The two rows at the top, the bed and the mirrors, are a morning’s work at any stage and are the first guides. The stove needs the fit-out, because its position is a gas point or a circuit; the line from the door needs walls to move, though a screen serves at any stage. The bedroom’s walls, the bathroom and the front door step up the ladder, each needing the kind of work that touches the fabric, and in a block the last two need the building’s consent as well. The stair and the facing are at the bottom: the stair is structure and the one item most renovations leave, and the facing is the building’s orientation and is set once, at the new build, and never again. Consent means the freeholder, the block or the planning office as the case is. The ordering is the site’s reading of what the building trades can do; the eight items are the ones the guides return to.

The ladder above can be read the other way, from the job a household has actually booked, and the table gives that reading. The two rows at the top, the bed and the desk, the mirrors and the beams, are within reach of any job and of no job at all: they are a morning with a friend, which is why the site’s bed placement and mirrors guides come first in every path and why a household with no budget still has most of the tradition to hand. The stove is the first item that needs a trade, because its position is a gas point or a cooker circuit, and it comes within reach at the fit-out and not before; the kitchen page gives what to do with a stove that must stay. The line from the door needs a wall to move and can be answered with a screen at any stage, which is the entrance guide’s cheapest cure. The bedroom’s walls need the partitions to move, and a flat being replanned has them; the bathroom needs the stack, which in a flat fixes the room where the building put it and in a house can be moved at the cost of the drains. The front door is structure and, in a block, the building’s, so that a renovation reaches it only with consent, and the stair is structure that most renovations leave because the cost of moving it is the cost of the rest of the job. The facing is last and alone, because it is the building’s orientation and is set once at the new build; a renovation of any size takes it as it finds it, and the facing direction guide measures it rather than changing it. A household reading its own job down the column it has booked will find how far up the ladder the money goes, and the site’s advice is to spend the top rows first, since they cost nothing and the research supports them, and to buy the rows below only where the job is opening the fabric anyway.

Checklist

Site: back to rising ground or a wall; the road across the front, not at the door; the falling corner planted
Facing: the open side to the light; the living rooms on it, the bedrooms behind; the bearing read before the plan is fixed
Plan: close to a rectangle; no missing corner at the door; the centre open; bedrooms at the far end
Door: a bright hall inside; no stair on the threshold; the line through the house broken by the plan
Structure: beams along the bedrooms, not across; columns in corners; drains to the outside walls
Rooms: a solid wall for every bed; the stove off the door’s line and a metre from the sink, facing the room
Days and measures: ground, roof, door and moving-in on the almanac’s days; door openings on the ruler, if you keep the school
Finishes last: light, material, colour, in that order