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Vastu Shastra, Feng Shui – Differences and similarities

Vastu shastra is believed to be same as feng shui but factually both the fields are quite different from each other and work on different parameters. There is no denial that some of the philosophies followed by both the fields are alike whereas some of the principles are contradictory to each other. Hence, both the practices should be treated as different from each other.

Vastu shastra is Indian originated science of architecture and art of balancing five elements in a premise whereas Feng Shui has Chinese origin and primarily based on local geography of China. Ironically practicing Feng Shui is barred in its own country, China, however people all over the world are buying Feng Shui items and decorating their homes without understanding the lucidity behind it. Let us dive deeper and find out how is Vastu shastra different from Feng Shui and what are the similarities between both of them.

Differences

Vastu Shastra	Feng Shui
An art of designing a house in such a way that all the 5 elements of nature are balanced inevitably without any further intervention.	More about placement of feng shui items to balance energies in already built-up houses.
Vastu shastra divides a house in 8 parts and works on balancing energies therein. Vastu application starts from a piece of land and then continues at every step of building a structure	There is no role or presence of any scientific principle in Feng-Shui in constructing a house.
Vastu shastra is about balancing energies released by the 5 elements- Water, Fire, Earth, Air and Space	Feng Shui is more about balancing energies from Water, Fire, Wood, Metal and Earth.
North is considered as most auspicious direction and south as an inauspicious direction in Vastu shastra. Vastu considers northeast entry to house as a positive one.	Feng shui considers South as most auspicious direction and recommends entry door only in south.
Vastu recommends particular location for bed-rooms, toilet, kitchen, bathroom, store etc	Feng shui doesn’t suggest anything related to placement of rooms, toilet, store, toilets etc
Vastu favour the presence of an element in a particular zone only. Presence of element in a zone other than its restricted zone creates disturbances. For example, water is for northeast and it should not be there in southwest	Feng shui supports to have presence of all the 5 elements in all the directions of house. So, if it is a bed room, then it should have depiction of fire, water, wood, metal and earth in some or the other form in the room.
Northeast is direction of water in Vastu shastra and Southwest for earth.	As per Feng shui northeast is earth corner and hence more of earthen things should be kept there.

Similarities

Both the fields work on cosmic radiations and balancing the energies released by the five elements of nature. Though two of the elements in Feng shui are different from the elements Vastu shastra works on.
Water and earth are considered as the most important elements for growth, prosperity and stability in life in both the fields.
Both the practices don’t believe in constructional changes to balance energies and have various tools to balance energies.
Clutter free and dust free premises to allow free flow of energies is the primary rule in both the practices.