Which Way Should Your Work-From-Home Desk Face?

Both are good directions (दिशा, disha) to work facing, and the usual distinction is the kind of work rather than the person.

North is the conventional choice for anything financial — sales, negotiation, client work, accounts, anything where money moves. East is the traditional direction for study, learning, writing and work that needs sustained concentration. If your week contains both, pick the one that matches the work you find hardest, because that is the work the arrangement needs to support.

The most common mistake in a home setup is not the direction faced but the back. Desks get pushed against windows because that is where the light is, which leaves the worker with an open window or an open doorway behind them.

A solid wall behind the chair is the traditional arrangement and the one people report noticing fastest. It is not only symbolic — a back to an open door means every movement in the house registers in peripheral vision, and attention goes with it.

In a Mumbai one or two-bedroom flat this is often the only option, and the honest answer is that it is not ideal but it is workable.

The problem is not the room, it is that sleep and work end up sharing the same few square feet, so neither gets a boundary. The arrangement matters more here than anywhere else.

Sitting directly under an exposed beam is avoided in Vastu, and in a flat with a false ceiling the beam is often there but hidden. If you know one runs over the desk, shifting the chair a foot or two is usually all that is needed.

The same applies to a loft or heavy storage directly overhead. Where it cannot be moved, the usual remedy is to lighten what is stored there rather than to rebuild anything.

A few conventions are worth knowing, mostly because they happen to match how people work well anyway.

Keep the area directly in front of you clear enough to actually use. Heavy items, books and equipment go to your south or west. Water — a glass or a small bowl — belongs to the north-east, though keep it away from cables and sockets for obvious reasons. Anything to do with money, including files and the card reader, sits to the north.

Natural light from the north or east is the traditional preference and also the most comfortable to work in, because it does not move across your screen through the day the way west light does.

The common error is a single overhead ceiling light and a bright screen in an otherwise dark room, which is both poor Vastu for the zone and hard on the eyes. A lamp on the desk, and something lighting the wall behind the screen, fixes both at once.