Kua Number: How to Calculate It and Find Your Lucky Directions

Your Kua number is a single digit from 1 to 9, with no 5, worked out from your birth year and gender, and in Eight Mansions Feng Shui it gives you four favourable and four less supportive compass directions. The year is the Chinese solar year, which begins at Li Chun on 3, 4 or 5 February, so anyone born in January or early February counts as born in the previous year.

How to calculate your Kua number

1. Find your solar year. If you were born before Li Chun in early February, use the previous year.
2. Add the last two digits of the year, and keep adding until you have one digit. For 1987: 8 + 7 = 15, and 1 + 5 = 6.
3. Men: subtract that digit from 10, or from 9 if born in 2000 or later. If the result is 0, it becomes 9.
4. Women: add 5, or 6 if born in 2000 or later, and reduce to one digit again.
5. If the result is 5, it becomes 2 for men and 8 for women.

So for 1987, a man gets 10 − 6 = 4, and a woman gets 6 + 5 = 11, which reduces to 2. The Kua number is also called the Ming Gua, or life trigram, because each number links you with one of the eight trigrams of the bagua.

Worked examples

The second row shows the commonest mistake. Someone born on 20 January 1990 counts in the 1989 solar year, and gets a different Kua from someone born later in 1990.

Your Kua’s trigram and element

Each Kua number belongs to one of the eight trigrams of the bagua, and each trigram has an element.

These descriptions are traditional sketches, not fixed traits, and many Feng Shui practitioners use the Kua only for directions.

Li Chun: why January births need care

Li Chun, “the beginning of spring”, is the moment the Sun reaches 315° on the ecliptic, which falls on 3, 4 or 5 February. The Kua number follows this solar year, and two points trip people up.

• It is not Chinese New Year. The lunar new year moves between 21 January and 20 February; the Kua follows the fixed solar date.
• Birth on the Li Chun date itself. The year turns at a precise moment, so the time of birth decides. Our Kua finder asks for your birth time in that case, in the time zone of your birthplace.

Your four lucky directions

Every Kua number has four favourable directions, ranked from the strongest.

Sheng Chi, “generating breath”, is the strongest of the four, linked with success, vitality and fresh opportunity.

Your four less supportive directions

The names sound alarming, but they are traditional labels, not warnings. These are simply the directions to use for storage, utility rooms and passing spaces rather than for your bed or your desk.

What each direction is for

East and West groups

The eight directions split into two families, and all four of your good directions come from your own group.

Homes are grouped too, by the direction they sit in, which means the back of the house, opposite the side it faces. A house sitting north, south, east or south-east is an East house; one sitting west, south-west, north-west or north-east is a West house.

Living in a house of the other group is not bad luck. Eight Mansions is designed to be adjusted room by room, and the directions you face and sleep in matter more than the house as a whole.

Using your Kua at home

1. Desk: turn it so you face your Sheng Chi while you work. If the room will not allow it, any of your four good directions will do.
2. Bed: point the head of the bed towards Tien Yi or Yen Nien.
3. Dining: sit facing Tien Yi at meals if you can.
4. Main door: a door that faces your Sheng Chi is ideal, but no one should move a door for it.
5. Spare spaces: where you have a choice, put storage and bathrooms in your four less supportive directions.

Kua and Vastu together

Vastu and Feng Shui share a love of light, order and good placement, but they are different systems. Vastu works from the directions of the home; the Kua works from a personal number. Where they meet, you can usually satisfy both.

Take sleep. Vastu asks you to sleep with your head to the south or west, or the east, and never to the north. Every Kua number has at least one favourable direction among these: south and east are good for the whole East group, and west for the whole West group. So a Kua 4 person can sleep with the head to the south, which is their Tien Yi and also Vastu’s first choice, and a Kua 8 person can sleep with the head to the west, their Yen Nien.

For the Vastu side of these choices, our bedroom Vastu tips and main door guide go room by room.

Example: one family, three Kua numbers

• The father, born on 14 August 1990, is Kua 1, East group.
• The mother, born on 2 February 1992, counts in the 1991 solar year because she was born before Li Chun: 9 + 1 = 10, then 1, and 1 + 5 = 6, so she is Kua 6, West group.
• Their son, born in June 2015, gets 1 + 5 = 6 and 9 − 6 = 3, so he is Kua 3, East group.

Each sets up their own desk: the father faces south-east, the mother west and the son south, their Sheng Chi directions. The shared bed is the puzzle, since no direction suits both East and West groups. Head to the west is a sensible answer: Vastu accepts it, it is the mother’s Sheng Chi, and for the father it is Ho Hai, the mildest of his four less supportive directions. The son can sleep with his head to the south, his Sheng Chi and Vastu’s first choice.

Common mistakes

• Using the calendar year for a birth in January or early February.
• Using Chinese New Year instead of Li Chun.
• Swapping the formulas. Men and women are calculated differently.
• Keeping a Kua 5, which does not exist in Eight Mansions.
• Mixing up facing and sitting when you group a house.
• Treating the less supportive directions as dangerous. They are simply less suited to your main activities.

Our free Kua finder, on the Vastu and Feng Shui page, works out your number from your date of birth and gender, handles the Li Chun date for you, and lists your four lucky and four less supportive directions, with a bagua map of the home.