If you believe in fengshui, the ancient Chinese philosophy of living in harmony with your physical surroundings, you must pay attention to color schemes of your home or other places you frequent.

One of the important concepts of fengshui is that the universe is composed of five elements: Wood, fire, earth, metal and water. These elements can combine to either create the Cycle of Production (see photo below), in which every element supports the elements on either side of it, or a Cycle of Destruction (see photo below), in which the elements interfere with neighboring elements.

The goal of applying fengshui is to maximize opportunities in our environment to allow elements to nurture one another, while simultaneously remedying situations in which elements seem to be at odds.

Colors play an important role in fengshui, because different colors represent different elements. So, the application of color is equal to the arrangement of the five elements.

To ensure that our applications of color are in accordance with the principles of fengshui, we must first discover our native element. According to the Element Theory, we are all made up of a combination of the elements, but we have one main elemental influence in our personage.

Our native element is determined by the year we were born on the Chinese lunar calendar. The five elements in the cycle sequence of metal, water, wood, fire and earth would respectively dominate for two years. For example, the lunar years of 1960 and 1961 are mainly dominated by the metal elements, so metal became the native element for people born in these two years. But for people born in the years of 1962 or 1963, their native element is water.

The following are a few basic principles of color application at home to help you figure out if you are in need of a new color scheme for the New Year.

1) To support our natural elements, we need some representation of the element in our homes.

2) In the Cycle of Production, the element to the right of our native element feeds, nurtures and creates our element, so we also need representation of that element in our home.

3) When there are multiple people living in one home, we need to make sure that everyone's supporting elements are present in the home, and that there are no major conflicts between the presence of the elements. Balance is an important concept in fengshui. And remember, it's important to have all elements present in your home to achieve balance.

4) However, it's often easier to choose one element to focus on in one room or part of the house, based upon who spends the most time there.

(China Daily 12/26/2007 page4)