Guides · Site · 12 min read · Updated September 2026

Choosing a home: reading the site

What to look at from the street, at the door and on the plan when viewing a house or a flat, in the order the tradition looks. The five steps of a classical site reading, the plot shapes the manuals rank, the surveyor’s list beside the tradition’s, and which of its objections can be fixed after moving in.

Oriented SW 234°

Earth

Fig. 01 A small window in a textured wall. From the street a house shows what it faces, what it turns its back on and how much light it lets in.

A viewing is the one moment when the tradition’s site rules can still change something, because after the move the road, the slope, the shape of the plan and what the door faces are fixed. This guide is the tradition’s viewing list, from the street inward, with a note against each item saying whether it can be fixed later. It begins with the procedure the tradition used before there were streets, because the order of that procedure is the order of a good viewing. The furniture can always be moved. The street cannot.

The five steps

Fig. 01 The five steps of a classical site reading, in the order the Form school’s manuals give them. First seek the dragon: the range of hills the site descends from, followed from its highest point down to where it settles. Second examine the sands, the lower hills at either hand that shelter the site, the dragon on the left and the tiger on the right. Third observe the water: how it arrives, whether it curves toward the site or away, where it leaves and whether the leaving is hidden. Fourth find the spot, the xue, the small place where the range settles, the sands enclose and the water gathers, on which the grave or the house is set. Fifth, and last, set the facing: the bearing, taken with the compass, of the open side. The order is the point. The compass comes after the eye has done its work, and a reading that begins with the bearing has skipped four steps. The five are the standard formula of the landform school, seek the dragon, examine the sands, observe the water, find the spot and set the facing, and the drawings are the same valley seen five times with a different thing attended to. The site is read from the largest thing to the smallest and from the given to the chosen; the yin house page draws the valley in full.

The Form school read a site in five steps, and the manuals give them as a formula every apprentice learned: seek the dragon, examine the sands, observe the water, find the spot, set the facing. The dragon is the range of hills the site descends from, followed from its highest point to where it settles; the sands are the lower hills at either hand that shelter the spot, the dragon on the left and the tiger on the right in the Zangshu’s names; the water is the stream or the road across the front, read for how it arrives, whether it curves toward the site or away, and whether its leaving is hidden; the spot, the xue, is the small place where the range settles, the sands enclose and the water gathers; and the facing is the bearing of the open side, taken with the compass when everything else has been decided. Yoon’s study of the landform vocabulary gives the terms, and the yin house page draws the valley they describe.

From the street

Plan 02 The street: a house off the axis of every road, and the house at the head of a T-junction Both houses face the main road. The solid house has the road passing across its front; the ghosted house sits where the side road meets the main road, so that the side road runs straight at its door; the dashed line with the red arrowhead is the road’s axis. The tradition reads the second as a road aimed at the house, the clearest exterior sha in the manuals, and the everyday reading is headlights in the front room at night and a car that fails to turn.

Stand across the street and look at the house as the tradition does. What does the front face: open ground, a road running at it, the corner of a larger building, a pylon, a blank wall? Is the ground behind higher than the ground in front, so that the house sits with its back to a rise, or the reverse, so that it stands on a slope falling away behind? Is the house lower than the road, so that it looks up at passing traffic? Are the neighbouring buildings taller on one side than the other, and which? The manuals want the left, as you face out of the door, a little higher than the right, the dragon above the tiger; a reader who cannot tell one from the other should note only whether the house is overshadowed, and from which side.

At the door

Walk to the door and stop where a visitor stops. Is there room to stand, a ming tang, or does the door open straight off the pavement or the corridor? Open the door and look straight through: what does the door’s line hit? A staircase landing at the threshold, a bathroom door, the back door or a window on the far wall are the arrangements the tradition names, and the last of them, the through house in which the front door sees straight out of the back, is the plan fault the manuals cite most. Is the entrance lit, and by what? The entrance and front door pages have the rules; the viewing question is only whether the arrangement can be changed, and a door’s line usually cannot, though a screen a pace inside it usually can.

On the plan

Plan 03 An L-shaped plan with the bagua laid over its bounding rectangle: the empty sector is the missing corner The nine sectors are drawn over the smallest rectangle that contains the plan, and the sector the building does not fill is read as missing. Here the notch takes half of the south side, so the south-west sector is missing rather than the rest of the house being an extension; the manuals put the threshold at about a third of the side. The remedy the tradition gives is to complete the shape outside, with paving, a hedge, a lamp or a tree at the missing corner.

The tradition prefers a plan that is a rectangle, or close to one, and reads what departs from it. An L-shaped or U-shaped plan is drawn inside its bounding rectangle and the nine sectors are laid over the whole; a sector the building does not fill is missing, and the manuals attach to the missing sector whatever the bagua attaches to it. A notch that is small relative to the side is read the other way round, as the rest of the house extending, and the threshold in the manuals is about a third.

The rest of the plan reading is quick. Where is the centre, and is it open, or is it a bathroom or a staircase, which the tradition dislikes there? Where do the bedrooms sit: over a garage, above the kitchen, beside the front door, at the far end where the tradition wants them? Are there beams across the rooms where beds and desks will go, and is the ceiling two metres thirty or more, which is what the English space standard asks over most of a room? Where is the stove, and does the front door see it? Which way do the main windows face, and what will the sun do in each room? The directions pages draw the sun’s path for every facing, and the finding your facing direction guide gives the compass reading to take while you are there, three times on the facing wall, written down as a mountain.

What can be fixed and what cannot

The distinction the tradition never makes explicit, and the viewing needs, is between what the occupant can change and what they cannot. Everything inside the walls is movable: beds, desks, sofas, mirrors, curtains, colours, lamps, the things every other page on this site is about. The shape of the plan, the position of the stairs and bathrooms, the beams and the ceiling height are fixed but can be worked around. The street, the slope, what the door faces, and the neighbouring buildings are fixed and cannot. A viewing should weigh the third list heavily, the second moderately, and the first not at all; and the five steps are the third list, which is why the tradition put them first.

The viewing list

The neighbourhood. The dragon: what the house descends from, what shelters it, what overshadows it
The street. No road aimed at the door; not on the outside of a bend; not below the road; back to rising ground rather than falling
What the front faces. Open ground or a view, not a corner, a wall or a pylon
The neighbours. Nothing much taller to the south; nothing looming on one side; the left a little higher than the right if anything
The plot. Wider behind than in front, if it is a plot at all; no corner cut off beside the door
The door. Room to stand; the door’s line not hitting stairs, a bathroom, the back door or a window
The plan. Close to a rectangle; centre open; bedrooms at the far end; stove out of the door’s line; ceilings at two metres thirty
Beams and ceilings. None across where beds and desks will go
Light. Which way the main windows face, what the sun does in each room, and what the windows look at
Noise, damp, daylight. The evidence list, checked at night and in the corners
The compass. Three readings on the facing wall, noted as a mountain, for whichever method you use later, and last