Cubicle Decorating Guidelines: Cubicle Feng Shui

What if, when you walked into your cubicle, you started feeling better, and not just because you were able to breathe the usual sigh of relief at getting away from home and settling into a nice long day of work? What if the décor of your cubicle, the design of your desk, and the wall color could mean a salary increase, a healthier body, and a more satisfying love life?

Sound far-fetched? Not to those who have studied and experienced Feng Shui. Far from being a new fad, Feng Shui is the ancient Asian art of designing a cubicle and arranging the space, paying close attention to the flow of energy, or Ch’i, across the work surfaces. A thorough Feng Shui design takes into account everything from the placement of the waste basket and thumbtacks to the choices of lighting and artwork and the location of the stapler, all with the goal of creating energetic harmony and balance.

As readers of interior design magazines know, the popularity of Feng Shui is surging in the United States and other western countries. Strange Proportion Inc. is proud to be a part of this growing movement; so proud, in fact, that we’re offering a new course: The Strange Proportion Feng Shui Cubicle Decorating Course.

To celebrate the launch of Strange Proportion’s new course in Feng Shui, for May we’re expanding our Cubicle of the Month feature to include two rooms of a Washington, DC office suite designed with the principals of Feng Shui, in consultation with H. Fizzola Brump, one of the country’s foremost Feng Shui masters and the lead instructor of our new course.

You will see that the three Strange Proportion Guidelines to Interior Design—function, mood, and harmony—perfectly complement the principles of Feng Shui, making for a cubicle that’s both well-decorated and well-balanced in terms of the Ch’i.

“Every time I come in, I get happy because I feel that the sun is dancing and kissing my cubicle walls. It’s as if the Great World Spirit is interacting with the whole room,” proclaimed one satisfied customer, an intuitive Ch’i navimanipulator from Kansas City, Missouri.

“Knowing how Ch’i is able to be manipulated in the body, it makes perfect sense to me that it can be moved outside the body as well,” she said.

Starting with the entry gap of the cube itself, the Feng Shui principle of paying attention to the entrance springs into action; similarly to the way your first impression of a person influences your relationship with him forever, so too the first impression on entering a cubicle influences how you will feel in that environment. In terms of Feng Shui, the entry gap sets the tone for the rest of the cubicle, and is the primary way energy enters the cubicle.

First, let’s look at the function of the entry gap. Practically speaking, you want a place where you can shrug off your overcoat, unwrap yourself from the public world, and get ready to enter the inner sanctuary of your cubicle. You also want your guests to experience the feeling of easing into the private world from the public world.

A well-designed entry gap accomplishes this beautifully. There would be, perhaps, a handy umbrella stand by the cubicle wall, and a doormat, so that you won’t be tracking in dirt and rain and slush—and the hectic energy of the workaday world—into the cubicle. There would be, however, no drop-leaf table, and at first this the very thought of this may make you panic: Where would you drop your stack of memos or your photocopies?

This is actually an intentional part of Feng Shui, and one which many people will find enormously helpful: the reduction of clutter. Clutter in our cubicles only blocks the flow of Ch’i, and you don’t have to be a practitioner of Feng Shui to know that the more clutter in a cubicle, the more time you waste looking for things and moving piles of paper around.

Color, important in any room’s design, takes on added meaning when working with Feng Shui in the cubicle. Finally, as with any room, you want to ask yourself if the cubicle harmonizes. Looking at the harmony of a cubicle is a key factor in Feng Shui. You might want a home office or a gym to increase your pulse and your thinking a bit, but generally speaking, you want the harmony of a cubicle to influence you to a more relaxed, yet always productive and efficient state than what you experience when you go out into the hustle and bustle of daily life.

In a truly soothing cubicle, everything harmonizes. A heavy ceramic Chinese umbrella stand, a glass and wood étagère, framed artwork—all fit with one another perfectly. As you round the corner from the entry gap, you find that the rolling computer stand, the ergonomically-designed lumbar-supporting desk chair, the small plastic printer stand and the Oriental carpet also fit with the formality of the entry gap.

One important part of our Course in Feng Shui is the same attention to individuality that is exhibited here. For another cubicle drone, a different wall color might work, based on her needs, on what elements she wanted to balance, and on the layout of her cubicle.

It’s easy to see how using Feng Shui can help any cubicle’s design, and how the Strange Proportion Guidelines of function, mood and harmony themselves harmonize with the principles of Feng Shui, which, after all, are simply the roots of all good design. Feng Shui isn’t a cure-all or a religion; it’s simply a way to create beautiful and harmonious cubicles which, in turn, can promote balance and well-being. Optimize your feng shui synergies today! Click here for more information on the The Strange Proportion Feng Shui Cubicle Design Course.