Your Kua number is the key to personal Feng Shui, telling you which compass directions support you and which to avoid. Derived from your birth year and gender, it places you in one of two groups and assigns your lucky and unlucky directions for sleeping, working, and facing. This calculator finds your Kua number and lays out your personal directions under the Eight Mansions system.
What the Kua Number Does
In the Eight Mansions, or Ba Zhai, school of Feng Shui, each person has four auspicious and four inauspicious directions, decided by their Kua number. Facing or sleeping toward a good direction is thought to support health, relationships, and success, while a bad direction is best avoided for important activities. The Kua number is how you find yours.
How It Is Calculated
The Kua number comes from your birth year and gender, with men and women using slightly different formulas, and it also respects the Chinese New Year boundary. The calculator handles the arithmetic and the boundary, then returns a number from one to nine, which sorts you into the East group or the West group.
East and West Groups
Kua numbers fall into two families. The East group, numbers one, three, four, and nine, thrives facing east, southeast, south, and north. The West group, numbers two, six, seven, and eight, thrives facing west, northwest, southwest, and northeast. Knowing your group is a quick way to remember which half of the compass favours you.
Using Your Directions
People apply their Kua directions in simple ways, positioning a bed so the head points to a good direction, arranging a desk to face one, or noting the direction the front door faces. You cannot always face a lucky direction, but tilting the important things in your home toward them is the practical heart of personal Feng Shui.
How to Use It
Enter your date of birth and gender and calculate. The tool gives your Kua number, your group, and your auspicious and inauspicious directions.
Kua Number and Your Home
The most practical payoff of knowing your Kua number is arranging your home around it. Sleeping with the crown of your head pointing to one of your good directions, sitting at a desk facing another, and noting whether your front door faces a favourable way are the classic applications. In a shared home, each person has their own Kua directions, so the usual approach is to favour the directions of whoever most needs support in a given room. It is a flexible, low-cost way to bring personal Feng Shui into daily life.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does gender affect the Kua number?
The traditional formulas for men and women differ, reflecting the yin and yang balance in the Eight Mansions system, so the same birth year can give a different Kua number by gender.
What are the East and West groups?
Two families of Kua numbers. The East group favours the east, southeast, south, and north directions, the West group the west, northwest, southwest, and northeast.
How do I use my lucky directions?
Position important things toward them, such as the head of your bed or the way your desk faces, and avoid your inauspicious directions for key activities.
What if my partner has a different Kua group?
That is common. In shared spaces you favour the directions of whoever most needs support in that room, and compromise sensibly, since each person keeps their own Kua directions.
Does the Kua number ever change?
No. It comes from your birth year and gender, both fixed, so your Kua number and directions stay the same throughout life.
Related calculators
Want to explore more? These Chinese astrology tools pair well with this one: Flying Star Period, Bazi Day Master, Five Element Personality and Nine Star Ki Calculator. Each one looks at the subject from a slightly different angle, so trying a few together gives you a fuller, more rounded picture. You can also see every tool in this tradition on the Chinese astrology calculators page, or browse the full list of calculators.