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About this tool
Informational guide to traditional vastu colour suggestions by direction, with a compass-bearing lookup for each room.
The Vastu Colour Guide sets out the colours Vastu Shastra traditionally associates with each of the eight directions and the Brahmasthan at the centre, together with the guardian deity, element and planet each direction is linked to. It also converts a compass reading into the right sector: Vastu divides a plan into eight 45-degree zones centred on the cardinal and ordinal points, so north runs from 337.5 to 22.5 degrees, and the tool corrects a magnetic reading to true north using the local declination before deciding which zone a room sits in. Vastu is a traditional architectural practice rather than a measurable science, and everything here is a record of what the tradition holds, offered for interest and for people who want to follow it.
Open Vastu Colour Guide on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Choose the Room, then set How do you know the direction? to From a compass bearing.
Enter the Compass bearing (degrees, magnetic) taken from the centre of the plan and the Magnetic declination (degrees, east positive) for your town; the reading is corrected to true north and matched to its 45-degree zone.
Read the zone's Sanskrit name, element and planet, the colour swatches for that direction and the all-eight-directions table of guardian, element, planet and colours, then press Copy result.
The 45-degree zone is calculated from your compass reading, not eyeballed from a floor plan.
Vastu is measured from true north, so a magnetic reading is adjusted before the sector is chosen.
Each answer says whether the tradition places that room there, and what it suggests when it does not.
White, pale yellow and light blue. The north-east, Ishanya, is linked to water and to Jupiter and is treated as the most auspicious corner, so the tradition keeps it the lightest and least cluttered part of the home and avoids black and dark red there.
Warm, grounded shades — terracotta, coral and warm red — because the south is associated with Mars and with the fire element. It is one of the directions where depth is welcome, in contrast to the north and north-east, which the tradition keeps pale.
Stand in the centre of the room, take a compass bearing, then add the local magnetic declination to convert the magnetic reading to a true one, since Vastu is measured from true north. Each of the eight zones covers 45 degrees, so a bearing of 200 degrees falls in the south-west sector, which runs from 202.5 to 247.5 degrees — readings within a few degrees of a boundary should be re-taken away from steel and wiring.
It treats a toilet in the north-east as one of the most significant faults in a plan, and the usual response where relocation is impossible is to decorate for the direction rather than the room: keep the zone white or pale, keep it dry and uncluttered, and avoid dark colours there. This is traditional guidance rather than a structural or health recommendation — consult an architect for anything affecting the building itself.