House Facing Direction Finder
Your house faces the direction you look when you stand at the front door and look out toward the street. Enter your address and we will work that number out from the geometry of the road your property fronts, to the nearest degree. No compass needed, and nothing to install.
This is the number almost every other feng shui rule about a building depends on, and it is the one most people never manage to pin down.
Find your facing direction
Start typing your address and choose it from the list.
What facing direction means
Facing is the direction the building addresses the world, which in almost every case is the way you look when you step out of the front door toward the street. It is not the direction the back of the house points, and it is not the direction any individual room points. It is a property of the building.
Once you have that number, the rest of the compass work follows from it. The annual chart is laid over the building relative to this direction, and the classical guidance for an entrance depends on which sector it sits in.
Why road geometry beats a phone compass
A phone compass reads a magnetic field, and the field at your front door is distorted by the door frame, the wiring in the wall and sometimes a steel lintel above the opening. Readings taken at the threshold are routinely off by fifteen or twenty degrees, and the phone gives no warning when that happens.
Road geometry sidesteps the problem. The position of the building and the line of the road it fronts are both fixed facts, and the angle between them is arithmetic. It is what a surveyor would do, and it returns the same answer every time.
Where this method needs your help
Corner lots and flag lots are the honest exceptions. When a property fronts two roads, or sits at the end of a long shared driveway, the road the address resolves to is not always the road the entrance actually faces. That is why the result above has a manual override. Your own knowledge of your entrance beats any calculation.
Common questions
How do you work out which way a house faces?
We take the coordinates of the property from its address, then take the geometry of the road it fronts, and compute the bearing of the line running from the building out to that road. It is the same calculation a surveyor would do, and it does not depend on you holding a phone level next to a metal door frame.
Is this more accurate than a compass app?
For most houses, yes. A phone compass sits near wiring, metal frames and sometimes a steel lintel, and it can be off by fifteen or twenty degrees without telling you. This method is geometry rather than magnetism. The exception is a corner lot or a flag lot, where the road the address points at is not the road the door actually faces, which is why there is a manual override.
What does the facing direction actually change?
It decides which compass sector each side of your building sits in, which is what the annual charts are laid over. It also drives the classical door advice, because guidance for a south facing entrance is different from guidance for a north facing one. Almost every other rule about a home depends on this number first.
Does this tell me anything about the rooms inside?
No, and it cannot. We can see the building, the lot and the road from above. We cannot see through the roof. This tool tells you which way the building faces, and nothing about which room is where, because that is not something an address can reveal.
Does entering my address cost anything or sign me up?
No. The facing direction is free and there is no account to create. Your address is used to work out the answer and is not shared or sold.