Vastu and modern interiors: what you can reconcile, and what you cannot

Vastu comes up in a large share of Indian interior projects, and it is usually raised apologetically, as though it were a complication. It is a planning constraint. Designers work with planning constraints all day.

This article sets out which principles are straightforward to design around, where the genuine conflicts are in a modern flat, and how to make the decision early enough that it stays cheap.

We are not going to make claims about what Vastu does. That is not ours to assess. What we can tell you is what following it costs you in plan, and what it does not.

How common is this, really?

More common than the design press suggests, and harder to quantify than you would hope.

The figure you will see quoted everywhere is that 93% of Indian homebuyers want Vastu-compliant homes. It comes from a Housing.com survey reported in December 2015 (opens in a new tab) and it is worth knowing two things about it before you repeat it. It is eleven years old, and the sample was 328 brokers, architects and builders across eight cities, not homebuyers themselves. So it measures what the industry believes buyers want.

Several other statistics circulate on this topic attributed to well-known property portals. We tried to trace them to a primary source and could not. We have left them out.

The honest summary: it matters to a substantial number of Indian clients, and it matters in degrees, from "the main door and the kitchen, please" to a full consultation with a practitioner.

The principles that are easy to design for

Much of what Vastu asks for maps onto things a designer wants anyway.

Light and orientation. North and east light is softer and cooler through an Indian day; the preference for placing living areas and openings towards it is also sound environmental design.

Air movement. Cross-ventilation between openings on different faces is both a Vastu concern and basic comfort planning.

Weight distribution. Heavier storage to the south and west, lighter and more open to the north and east. This costs nothing to honour, because it is a joinery placement decision, not a structural one.

Clutter and circulation. Clear circulation, particularly at the entrance, is a Vastu principle and an ordinary planning goal.

The entrance treated as significant. Giving the front door a proper threshold, light and a place to put things down is good design regardless of why you do it.

None of these will cost you money or compromise a contemporary scheme. If your interest in Vastu stops around here, you will never feel a constraint.

Where the real conflicts are

Three, mostly.

The kitchen

The south-east is the preferred kitchen zone, with the cook facing east. In a built apartment the kitchen is where the plumbing and gas stack put it, and moving it means moving wet services through a slab you do not own.

What is usually possible: changing which way the hob faces within the existing kitchen, which is often the part that matters most to a practitioner, and is a layout change rather than a services change.

What is usually not: relocating the kitchen to a different corner of a flat. It is sometimes technically possible, frequently not permitted by the building, and always expensive.

The head of the bed

South or east is the common guidance. This is often the easiest conflict to resolve, because a bedroom's constraints are the window, the door and the wardrobe run, and a bed can usually be re-oriented at the layout stage at no cost.

Where it becomes a real trade-off is when the only wall that works for the bed head is also the only wall long enough for the wardrobe. That is a genuine choice, and it is better made on a plan than after the joinery is drawn.

The toilet

Position rules for toilets are the hardest to satisfy in an apartment, because the drainage stack is fixed. A toilet can sometimes move a metre. It rarely moves to another corner without a raised floor, a pump, or both.

Apartment, villa or house changes everything

In a villa or an independent house being built, most Vastu principles are available to you, because the plan is not yet fixed. The cost of compliance is close to zero if it is raised at the planning stage and considerable if it is raised later.

In an apartment, the front door, the structure, the window positions, the plumbing shafts and the kitchen stack are all decided. What remains negotiable is internal layout, joinery placement, the direction things face, colour and material. That is a real amount of latitude, but it has an edge, and you will meet it.

This is worth saying plainly because it manages a disappointment we see often: a client buys a flat, then asks for full Vastu compliance, and is upset to learn that the building already decided several of the answers.

Make the decision before the layout is drawn

The practical advice in this whole article is one sentence: decide how strictly you want to follow Vastu before the layout stage, not after.

If you intend to consult a practitioner, do it before the layout is signed off. Their recommendations are layout recommendations. Bringing them in after the working drawings are complete means reopening a stage that is already finished, and a change after sign-off gets priced before it is built, which is exactly the situation worth avoiding.

Tell your designer, at the first meeting, which of these you are:

• Strict. A practitioner is involved and their guidance governs the plan.
• Selective. The entrance, the kitchen direction and the bed heads matter; the rest does not.
• Not applying it. Say so, so nobody plans around a constraint you do not have.

All three are perfectly workable. What causes problems is discovering in month four that the answer was the first one.

What we do

We plan around it when asked, at the layout stage, and we tell you honestly when a request is not achievable in your building rather than pretending otherwise. We do not employ a practitioner and we do not advise on whether to follow Vastu. That is your decision, and we design to it.

If you want to see how the layout stage works and what gets signed off, the process is set out here.

Frequently asked

Can a modern interior follow Vastu?

Yes. Most Vastu guidance concerns orientation, placement and circulation rather than style, so it places almost no constraint on a contemporary material palette or aesthetic. The constraints appear in plan, not in appearance.

Which direction should the kitchen face?

The south-east is the commonly preferred zone, with the cook facing east. In an apartment the kitchen's position is usually fixed by the plumbing and gas services, so the achievable change is normally the direction the hob faces within the existing kitchen.

Is Vastu compliance possible in an apartment?

Partially. Internal layout, joinery placement and orientation of furniture are all available to you. The front door, structural walls, window positions and drainage are not. A designer should tell you at the survey stage which of your requirements are achievable in that specific flat.

When should I raise Vastu with my designer?

At the first meeting, before the layout is drawn. It is a layout constraint, and layout is the first thing solved and the most expensive thing to revisit.