House facing direction finder

With your back to the house, looking out, and the top edge of the phone pointing the way you are looking.

1. 1Calibrate first. If your phone has been off or unused, move it in a slow figure of eight for a few seconds.
2. 2Stand in the main doorway, just inside the threshold, with your back to the house.
3. 3Hold the phone flat at waist height, screen up, the long way round, not turned sideways. Its top edge is the direction being measured.
4. 4Line the phone up square to the door, not at an angle to it. Wait for the reading to settle.
5. 5Save the reading, then take two more a few steps further out along the same line, clear of the door frame and any gate.

They are two separate measurements, and on some plots they give different answers.

Door facing is the direction you look when you stand in the main doorway and look out. Road facing is the direction you look when you stand on the plot and look straight across the road in front of it.

On a plot with one road and a door on the front wall, the two usually match. They can differ when the door opens to the side of the house, and a corner plot has a road on two sides, so it has two road facings. When you talk to an architect or a Vastu consultant, say which one you measured. This tool lets you mark it, and it carries through to the WhatsApp message.

Most laptops and desktops have no compass sensor, so read the bearing another way and type it into the tool.

With a handheld compass or a phone compass app:

1. 1Stand where the steps above describe, with your back to the house and clear of metal.
2. 2Hold the compass level and let the needle or the reading settle.
3. 3Read the bearing in the direction you are looking, then type it in. Repeat from two more spots.

With a site plan that has a north arrow:

1. 1Draw a line straight out from the main door, square to the door, on a copy of the plan.
2. 2Draw a second line from the same point, parallel to the north arrow.
3. 3With a protractor, measure clockwise from the north line to the door line. That angle is your bearing.

A plan is only as good as its north arrow, which may mark true or grid north rather than magnetic, so check it against a reading on site before you rely on it.

Equal sectors of the circle, each centred on its direction. A bearing exactly on a line counts as the next sector clockwise.

Take 78 degrees. On 8 zones it is East. On 16 zones it is East-north-east, but only 0.75 degrees from East, whose sector starts at 78.75 degrees. The tool flags any reading within 3 degrees of a line like this, because a small error would change the label.

Treat it as approximate. Steel and reinforced concrete disturb a compass, and a house is full of both.

Column and slab reinforcement, steel door frames, gates, grilles, parked cars and electrical panels can all pull a reading off, sometimes by a lot and with no warning on screen. The fix is several readings from different spots along the same line, some of them away from the building. If they agree, you can rely on them more. If they disagree, move further from the metal and try again.

A compass also points to magnetic north, not true north. The gap is called declination, and NOAA's Magnetic Field Calculator gives the figure for your location. This tool does not correct for it. To estimate a true bearing from a compass reading, add an east figure or subtract a west one. Even a small figure can move a reading across a line, which is one more reason to look at the flag.

For a design decision or a legal boundary, have the direction confirmed on site with a proper survey.

This tool does not say. It measures a direction and gives no good or bad verdict.

Once you know your direction, the Vastu room placement checker lets you look at where the rooms sit. This tool does not ask for your birth date or rashi, and no reading here depends on them.

Planning a house around your plot? Talk to us, or send your reading on WhatsApp from the tool above. Building in Haryana? Meet the Hisar studio. In the tricity, the Chandigarh studio in Mohali.