How to Check the Vastu of a House: A Step-by-Step Method With Diagrams

To check the Vastu of a house yourself, you need four things: a plan drawn to scale, the direction the house faces (read with a phone compass and corrected for magnetic declination), the centre of the plan, and the eight directions laid over it. Then you mark each room and read it against the placements practitioners commonly give. This guide walks through each step and ends with a worked 30x40 example.

About the rules below: Vastu Shastra is a traditional Indian system of design, and its texts and practitioners do not all agree. The room placements here are the ones most commonly given today. There is no scientific evidence that following them changes health, wealth or luck; people follow them as tradition. The compass, declination and building-code points are physical facts and are sourced. The 30x40 plan is illustrative.

New to the ideas behind Vastu? Start with our practical guide to Vastu for a new home. This post is the method: how to check a plan you already have, carefully enough that the result means something.

What you need

A measured plan: the architect's drawing, the approved plan or the builder's brochure. If you have none, measure the rooms and draw them on graph paper at 1 square to 1 foot.
A phone compass, a ruler, a pencil and a protractor.
Your town, to look up its magnetic declination.

For what a 30x40 plot can legally hold, see what you can build on a small plot.

Step 1: Find which way the house faces

"Facing" is the direction you look when you stand in the main doorway and look out. Practitioners differ on which wall defines it: most take the wall with the main door, some take the side that faces the road, which can differ on a corner plot. Pick one and stay consistent.

Calibrate the compass. Google Maps on Android asks you to move the phone in a figure 8 until the direction beam narrows (Google Maps Help). Apple says to hold an iPhone flat so the Compass crosshairs line up (Apple Support).
Stand outside, 1 to 2 m in front of the front wall, with the top edge of the phone pointing straight out of the wall, and read the bearing in degrees.
Keep clear of steel and electronics. Apple warns that magnetic or environmental interference affects compass accuracy. Cars, gates, grilles, meters and RCC columns are the usual culprits.
Take three readings along the wall and keep the middle one.

Our rule of thumb, not a standard: if the three readings are more than about 5° apart, something nearby is pulling the needle, so move and try again. A reading taken indoors at the centre of the house is the one most likely to be thrown off by the steel around you.

Diagram: a house plan with three phone positions outside the front wall reading 81, 82 and 83 degrees, an eight-direction compass rose with sector boundaries at 22.5, 67.5, 112.5, 157.5, 202.5, 247.5, 292.5 and 337.5 degrees, a reading of 83.3 degrees falling in East, and NOAA magnetic declination values for nine Indian cities — Read along the front wall, add the declination, then find the sector: 82° + 1.3° = 83.3°, which is East. Diagram: MOA

Cross-check against the north arrow on the approved site plan and an online satellite map turned north-up. The old texts used no compass at all: the Manasara, in P.K. Acharya's translation, finds the east-west line by marking where the tip of a gnomon's shadow meets a circle in the forenoon and again in the afternoon (Architecture of Manasara, chapter VI, pp. 23 to 25). That gives true east, set by the sun.

A single-storey house with exposed brick walls, slender brick piers and a broad four-way pitched roof over deep verandahs, set on a green lawn with palms on the left — Garden Home Design, Sohna. The project page notes stone slabs on steel girders over its verandahs: take compass readings out on the lawn, not under them. Image: Atelier Shreenu on MOA

Step 2: Correct for magnetic declination

A compass points to magnetic north, not true north, and the angle between them is the declination. By NOAA's convention, east declination is positive and west negative, and true bearing = compass bearing + declination (NOAA NCEI, geomagnetism FAQ).

In India the correction is small. We ran NOAA's declination calculator (World Magnetic Model 2025) for October 2026, and every point we checked fell between about −1.8° at Kanyakumari and +2.8° at Srinagar:

City	Declination	City	Declination
Srinagar	+2.8° (east)	Pune	−0.1° (west)
Delhi	+1.3°	Kolkata	−0.3°
Jaipur	+1.1°	Hyderabad	−0.5°
Ahmedabad	+0.7°	Bengaluru, Chennai	−1.1°
Mumbai	0.0°	Thiruvananthapuram	−1.7°

The calculator puts the uncertainty at about 0.3° and the drift at 0.02° to 0.03° a year, so look up your own town. The correction only matters near a boundary: in Delhi a compass reading of 21.5° is 22.8° true, which moves a door from North into North-East. Practitioners differ on true versus magnetic north, and many work straight from the compass. If you are within about 3° of a boundary, call the result borderline. NOAA also notes that local magnetic anomalies of 3 to 4 degrees are common over small areas (NOAA, WMM accuracy).

Step 3: Find the centre of the plan

For a square or rectangle, draw the two diagonals: where they cross is the centre, the Brahmasthan. First choose the outline. For a house most practitioners use the outer walls; some include verandahs and balconies, others use the plot. Keep to one.

For an L-shaped plan or a cut corner, practitioners use one of two methods. The bounding rectangle: take the centre of the smallest rectangle around the plan, and read the missing corner as a "cut" in that zone. The balance point (centroid): split the plan into rectangles and average their centres weighted by area, or glue the plan to card, cut it out and balance it on a pin. The two can sit a few feet apart; the next post in this series works both through on an L-shaped plan.

Step 4: Lay the eight directions over the plan

Turn the plan so true north is up, then divide it one of two ways.

The 3 x 3 grid: thirds each way, giving eight directions around a central Brahmasthan. This follows the square grids of the classical site plans: the Manasara lists 32 ground plans from 1 square to 1,024, details the 64- and 81-square versions, and gives Brahma the nine central squares of the 81 (chapter VII, pp. 33 to 41).

Sectors from the centre: each direction gets 45°, centred on its compass point.

Direction	Bearing range
North (Kubera / Uttara)	337.5° to 22.5°
North-East (Ishanya)	22.5° to 67.5°
East (Indra / Purva)	67.5° to 112.5°
South-East (Agneya)	112.5° to 157.5°
South (Yama / Dakshina)	157.5° to 202.5°
South-West (Nairutya)	202.5° to 247.5°
West (Varuna / Paschima)	247.5° to 292.5°
North-West (Vayavya)	292.5° to 337.5°

On a square plan facing due north the two methods nearly agree; on a long rectangle or a plan turned off north they differ at the edges, and practitioners differ on which to prefer. Some split the circle into 16 zones of 22.5°, a later practitioner system covered in the next post.

Step 5: Mark the rooms and read the checklist

Mark the main door, kitchen, bedrooms, toilets, pooja, staircase, sump or borewell, overhead tank and whatever sits at the centre, and compare each with the placements most commonly given today:

Space	Commonly recommended	Commonly avoided
Main entrance	North, East or North-East	South-West
Kitchen	South-East; North-West as the alternative	North-East, centre
Master bedroom	South-West	North-East
Pooja	North-East, East or North	Next to or under a toilet
Toilets	North-West or West	North-East, South-West, centre
Staircase	South, West or South-West	North-East, centre
Sump or borewell	North, East or North-East	South-West
Overhead tank	South-West or West	North-East
Centre	Open, light, uncluttered	Toilet, staircase, heavy columns

This is common practice, not one fixed text. The Manasara itself varies by context: its chapter on temples of attendant deities places the kitchen in the Agni (south-east) plot (chapter XXXII, p. 298), while its chapter on dwelling-houses, placing buildings within a larger site plan, puts kitchens in the north, north-east or Parjanya quarter (chapter XXXVI, p. 399). A good practitioner will tell you which tradition they follow.

Worked example: an east-facing 30x40 house

An illustrative ground floor, 40 ft east to west by 30 ft north to south, in Delhi. Three readings outside the front wall give 81°, 82° and 83°, so keep 82°. Add Delhi's 1.3° and the true bearing is 83.3°, inside East. The diagonals meet 20 ft from the west wall and 15 ft from the north wall, and the grid cells are 13.3 ft by 10 ft.

Diagram: an illustrative east-facing 30x40 house plan, 40 ft east to west by 30 ft north to south, with a 3 by 3 zone grid and diagonals meeting at the centre, rooms shaded by result, and a checklist table showing 11 of 12 spaces matching or acceptable and a toilet in the North flagged — The zone grid over an illustrative 30x40 plan, each space read against the common placement. Diagram: MOA

Eleven of twelve spaces match or are acceptable. The flag is the second toilet in the North cell: swap it with part of Bedroom 2 in the North-West, at the cost of some bedroom area, or accept it. Note what the check does not tell you: whether rooms are well lit, toilets ventilate or the stair is comfortable.

Checks that matter whatever you believe

The Model Building Bye-Laws 2016, which states adapt into their own rules, set minimums worth checking on the same plan:

Windows: openings in habitable rooms and kitchens, excluding doors, of at least one-tenth of the floor area (clause 4.30.1.2), more in wet or intermediate climates and 25 per cent more for kitchens (clause 4.30.1.1).
Daylight depth: no part of a room counts as lit if it is more than 7.5 m from its window (clause 4.30.1.3).
Toilets: if they do not open to the outside, they must open onto a ventilation shaft, at least 1.2 sq m with no side under 0.9 m for buildings up to 10 m high (clause 4.30.2, Table 4.5).

Your city's rules govern, with the National Building Code behind them. Before buying land, also run our plot due-diligence checks.

If you live in a flat

The method is the same, but more is fixed. You cannot turn the building, move a toilet stack or shift the kitchen plumbing. You can choose which bedroom is the master, where the bed, desk and pooja unit go, and how you light and furnish the centre. Measure the flat's own main door, not the building gate, though practitioners differ here too. For low-cost ideas, see our post on Vastu in modern flats.

FAQ

Can I check the Vastu of my house with a mobile compass?

Yes, if you calibrate it, hold it flat, keep away from steel and use the middle of three readings taken outside. Treat a reading within a few degrees of a boundary as borderline.

Should I use true north or magnetic north for Vastu?

Practitioners differ. The classical gnomon method gave true directions; most practitioners now read a magnetic compass directly. In India the gap is under 3°, so it only matters near a boundary.

Which direction is my house facing: the main door or the road?

Most practitioners take the direction you face standing in the main doorway looking out. Some use the road side, which matters on corner plots.

How do I find the centre of an L-shaped house?

Use the centre of the smallest enclosing rectangle, or the plan's area-weighted balance point. Practitioners use both, so say which you used.

Planning a new house or reworking a plan? Find an architect on MOA or an interior designer on MOA who can plan your home with Vastu in mind, alongside light, ventilation and budget.

Sources

NOAA NCEI: Magnetic Field Calculators (declination for Indian cities, WMM-2025, October 2026) (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
NOAA NCEI: Geomagnetism Frequently Asked Questions (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
NOAA NCEI: WMM accuracy, limitations and error model (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
Apple Support: Use the compass on iPhone (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
Google Maps Help: Find and improve your location's accuracy (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
P.K. Acharya (tr.): Architecture of Manasara, vol. IV, Internet Archive (chapters VI, VII, XXXII, XXXVI) (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, TCPO: Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 (clause 4.30, p. 67) (accessed 16 Oct 2026)
Bureau of Indian Standards: National Building Code of India (accessed 16 Oct 2026)