The living room is the place to relax, rejuvenate, and spend time with friends, so it’s important to make some Feng Shui adjustments that encourage you to actually use the room. Many of us have a beautiful living room, but rarely spend time in it. Whether you call it a living room, great room, or gathering room, a few Feng Shui changes will help assure that this space becomes a home sanctuary and one of the most used and best loved rooms in your home.

When you start to rearrange your living room, make sure your sofa or biggest chairs is in the power position, which is facing the main entrance but not directly across from it. Guests naturally choose seats in this position because they feel protected when they can see who is entering the room. If you must locate your sofa with the back to the entrance, place a table behind it and display plants and a lamp on it to act as a screen.

Choose muted colors, tactile fabrics, and soft furniture for your living room. Be sure to create a good yin/yang balance in a room by balancing opposites, like light and dark, curvy and straight, geometric and floral, hard and soft.

Televisions, especially wide screen size, are best kept out of the living room. If you must place your TV in the living room, play a DVD screen saver that shows a fireplace or a fish tank when not watching it. When there is nothing on your TV screen, it becomes a big black "hole" in the room.

If your living room has high ceilings, the chi will travel up and get lost, rather than circulate around you. For a cozier room, set up a few conversation areas, decorate in earth tone colors, use slightly heavier rugs and furniture, and hang art at roughly the same height to visually bring down the ceiling and anchor the room.

If you have a fireplace, cover the opening with a screen or add glass doors. During the warmer weather the positive chi can be lost up the chimney. To counteract this, place a candelabra or a plant in a ceramic pot in the fireplace.

If your living room has dark or heavy beams, you might feel weighed down. To symbolically raise beams, aim lights at them, paint them the same color as the ceiling, or place tall plants in the four corners of the room to act like a canopy and lift the beams and ceiling.

Make sure you clear the clutter from your living room, and resist the urge to over-decorate with too much furniture, objects, and art. If your living room feels cluttered, try removing at least two pieces of furniture and see how much more spacious it feels.

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