Guides · Neighbours · 13 min read · Updated September 2026

The neighbours

The house next door is the part of a site nobody chooses, and the tradition had more to say about it than the paperbacks repeat; what the manuals read in a door that faces yours, a corner that points, a roof that overtops and a wall you share; the mirror war, how it starts and how it ends; what the noise and crowding research measured through the party wall; and the rule the tradition put before every cure, which was to screen and never to point.

Oriented NE 036°

Earth

Fig. 01 A corridor of doors. Every one of them faces something, and the tradition read what it faced before it read the flat.

A household chooses its house and takes its neighbours as it finds them, and the tradition, which read every house from the outside in, had a settled view of what the house next door could do to yours: a door that faced your door, a corner that pointed at it, a roof that overtopped yours, a slit between two towers aimed at your window, and a wall you shared with a stranger’s bed. The paperbacks keep the list and sell a mirror for each item, and the mirror is how neighbours who were merely close become neighbours at war. This guide gives what the manuals read in the house next door, the two situations a block makes most often, door facing door and the corner across the lane, drawn with what a household can do without touching the neighbour’s side; the mirror war, how it starts and the way out; what the research measured through a party wall; and the rule the tradition put before any cure, which was to screen, never to point.

The house next door, in the manuals

The manuals of the yang dwelling read a house from its surroundings before its plan, and a neighbour is the nearest surrounding there is. Four things about the house next door had names. A door directly opposite yours, across a lane or a corridor, was dui men sha, door facing door, which the manuals read as a quarrel between the two houses and which the choosing a flat guide asks a tenant to check at the viewing; the plain reading is two halls with no privacy from each other, since whoever opens one door looks into the other’s home. A corner of the neighbouring house pointed at your door or your window was jian jiao sha, the sharp corner, one of the exterior sha the sha catalogue gives, and its plain reading is a hard edge in the view from the place you sit or sleep. A neighbour that overtopped you, so that its wall stood over your court or your window, took your light and your sky, which the tradition called pressing and the levels guide gives in section; and the slit between two tall neighbours, tian zhan sha, which the city essay draws, sent a knife of wind and light at whatever it faced. Knapp’s surveys of village houses record the rules in use, ridge heights matched between neighbours and doors set so that none faced another, and Bruun’s fieldwork records what happened when they were broken, which was a dispute, sometimes for years, over a door or a roof, taken to the geomancer as it is now taken to a lawyer. The tradition, in other words, did not have a cure for a bad neighbour. It had a set of rules for building so that neighbours did not have grounds, and a habit of screening what the rules had not prevented.

Door to door

1Doors opposite: each hall opens onto the other’s comings and goings
2Doors offset: the manuals’ own answer, drawn in the plan
3A screen or a curtain inside one’s own door, a step in from the sill
4The door plain: no mirror, no charm, nothing aimed across
5A lamp and a mat outside, which make the corridor a hall the two households share

Plan 01 Door facing door, on a floor of a block A floor of a block, eighteen metres by seven, with a corridor down the middle and six flats. Two pairs of doors stand opposite each other, which the manuals call door facing door and read as a quarrel between the houses, and the plainer reading is two halls with no privacy from each other: whoever opens one door looks into the other’s flat. One pair is offset, which is the manuals’ own answer and the one a plan gives when it is drawn with the rule in mind; the site’s choosing a flat guide asks for it at the viewing. For a household already behind one of the facing doors there are three things to do, and none of them touches the neighbour’s door: a screen or a curtain inside its own door, a step in from the sill, so that the door can stand open without the flat in view; the door kept plain, with no mirror and no charm aimed across the corridor, since a thing aimed at a neighbour is read as aimed; and a lamp and a mat outside, which make the strip of corridor between the two doors a hall that the households share rather than a line between them. The remedy the tradition put first was the last one: neighbours who greet each other across a corridor are not reading it as a sha.

The plan above is the situation a block makes most often, and the site draws it with the household on one side, because that is the side the household can do anything about. The corridor of a block is the lane of the manuals, and two doors opposite each other on it are door facing door exactly as the tradition meant it; a floor plate drawn with the rule in mind offsets the doors, as one pair in the plan is offset, and a tenant who can choose should choose that pair. For a household already behind a facing door there are three things to do, and none of them crosses the corridor. The first is a screen or a curtain inside its own door, a step in from the sill, so that the door can stand open for a delivery or a child without the flat in view, which is the entrance page’s spirit wall at the scale of a flat. The second is to keep the door plain: no mirror, no charm and no red paper aimed across, since anything on a door that faces another door is read by the other household as meant for it, and the tradition’s door dressings, the household gods essay’s couplets and door gods, faced the street and not a neighbour. The third is a lamp and a mat outside, and it is the one the tradition would have put first: a lit, dressed strip of corridor between two doors is a hall the two households share, and neighbours who greet each other across a hall are not reading it as a sha. The doors inside guide gives the same reading for two bedroom doors facing across a landing, and the answer there is the same, a curtain, a plain leaf and a light.

The corner, and the mirror war

Fig. 02 The mirror war, in four. Two houses face each other across a lane, and the corner of one stands a little toward the other’s door. In the first panel a bagua mirror goes up over the door against the corner, which is what the paperbacks advise and what the tradition allowed against a ridge or a road; the neighbour, who did not have a corner until then, now has a mirror aimed at the house. In the second the neighbour answers, and two doors are armed. In the third the first house hangs a larger one, convex, on a practitioner’s advice, and the neighbour calls a practitioner too; Emmons found the mirror on the door the most common feng shui object in Hong Kong and the one most often hung against another household, and Bruun’s villages had the same quarrels over doors, heights and ridges, sometimes for years. Neither house is better off than before the first mirror. The fourth panel is the way out and it is what the older tradition did first: a plant set off the line of the corner, a curtain inside the door, and the two households talking, since the manuals’ own rule for a neighbour was to screen, never to point. A mirror aimed at a house is read as aimed, whatever it was hung for. Emmons 1992 for the Hong Kong survey; Bruun 2003 for the village disputes. The site’s mirrors guide gives the bagua mirror as an exterior deflector for roads and ridges, and this drawing is why it is not one for neighbours.

The second situation is older than blocks and the strip above gives it in four. Two houses face each other across a lane and the corner of one stands a little toward the other’s door; the household with the corner in its view hangs a bagua mirror over the door, which is what the paperbacks advise, and the neighbour, who had no complaint until then, now has a mirror aimed at the house. The answer is a mirror, and two doors are armed; the answer to that is a larger one, convex, on a practitioner’s advice, and a practitioner on the other side. Emmons’s survey of Hong Kong found the mirror over the door the most common feng shui object in the city and the one most often hung against another household, and found households on both sides of the same lane who had consulted geomancers about each other; Bruun’s villages had the same wars over doors, ridges and the height of a new house, and some of them outlasted the people who started them. Neither house is better off at the third panel than before the first mirror, and both have spent money. The fourth panel is the way out, and it is what the tradition did before the paperbacks: a plant set off the line of the corner, so that the edge is softened in the view; a curtain inside the door; and the two households talking, which in a village was the geomancer’s real job, since a practitioner called by both sides was a mediator with a compass. A household that has already hung the mirror can take it down, and the site’s advice is to do it first and talk second, because a mirror aimed at a house is read as aimed whatever it was hung for.

The wall between

The neighbour the tradition wrote least about is the one most households now have, on the other side of a party wall, and the research has measured what comes through it. The World Health Organization’s guidelines put the threshold for disturbed sleep at about thirty decibels in the bedroom and for annoyance in the daytime at about thirty-five, and a party wall in an older block passes a neighbour’s television, footsteps and voices well above both; Evans’s review of housing and mental health finds noise from neighbours among the steadiest of the built environment’s effects on wellbeing, and finds crowding, the sense of other households too close, measured in the same studies, with the same result. The quiet guide gives what each layer takes off, and its cheapest rule is the tradition’s: the bed off the shared wall, and the shared wall given the wardrobe, the bookshelves and the things that do not mind a neighbour. The tradition read a solid wall behind the bed as the tortoise and asked for it, and a party wall is the most solid wall a flat has; the site’s reading is that it is the tortoise for the wardrobe and not for the pillow, because a wall that is solid to the hand is not solid to a voice, and a sleeper with a stranger’s bed a hand’s breadth away on the far side of the plaster has the tortoise and not the quiet. Gifford’s review of high-rise living finds the same neighbours, above and below and on either side, as the thing residents of towers most often name, and the households that report the fewest troubles are the ones who know them, though nobody can say which of the two comes first.

Fig. 03 One party wall, both sides of it. The tradition asks for a solid wall behind the bed and reads it as the tortoise, and in a flat the party wall is the most solid wall there is — which is how two households end up with their pillows a hand's breadth apart, each of them following the rule. The wall is solid to the hand and not to a voice: an older block's party wall passes a television, footsteps and speech well above the thresholds the World Health Organization gives for sleep and for daytime annoyance. On the right the same wall given to what does not mind a neighbour — the wardrobe, the bookshelves — and the bed moved to the far side of the room, which is the cheapest rule in the quiet guide and the tradition's own rule read properly. The WHO guidelines put disturbed sleep at about thirty decibels in the bedroom and daytime annoyance at about thirty-five; the noise scale in the quiet guide places the household's own sounds against both. Evans finds neighbour noise among the steadiest of the built environment's effects on wellbeing, and Gifford finds the neighbours above, below and either side the thing tower residents name most often. The one mitigation the research keeps finding is not drawn here because it cannot be: people who report better relations with the household through the wall also report less annoyance at their noise.

Evidence · Knowing the neighbours

The one thing about neighbours the research keeps finding is that knowing them helps. The studies Evans reviews find that households who know the people on the other side of the wall report less annoyance at their noise, and Gifford’s review finds the same for towers: the sound of a known household is a sound, and the sound of an unknown one is an intrusion. The tradition arrived at it by another road. The village geomancer who was called to a dispute over a door settled it, when he settled it, by getting the two households to agree to a screen each, and the agreement did more than the screens. A lamp and a mat in a corridor, a greeting across a lane and a name for the sound through the wall are feng shui of the kind the evidence backs, and they cost nothing.

The neighbours, in order

At the viewing. A door that does not face another, a corner that does not point at the window, a neighbour that does not overtop; the choosing a flat route has the stops.
A facing door. A screen or a curtain inside your own, the door kept plain, a lamp and a mat outside.
A corner. A plant off its line, a curtain, and the bed and the desk moved out of the view; no mirror.
A mirror already up. Take it down before the conversation, not after.
The party wall. The wardrobe and the shelves against it, the bed off it, the quiet guide’s layers if it is not enough.
The neighbours themselves. Names, a greeting, and the corridor treated as a shared hall; people who report better relations with their neighbours also report less annoyance at their noise.