You’re designing a locker room, and you’ve picked out beautiful wooden lockers and decided upon your amenities. When you go online to pick out paint colors you stumble across something called Feng Shui. What is Feng Shui? What impact could Feng Shui have on your locker room? Would considering the chi of your players bring your team more success? Would arranging the locker room in a more harmonious flow endow your patrons with inner peace? Maybe not, but there may still be some good design sense hidden behind all the mysticism.
Feng Shui is an ancient Asian concept, focusing on achieving balance and harmony between elements to promote the flow of chi. Chi, a life energy force, flows through nature, people and buildings, and when it flows freely, it promotes good things. Even people who don’t believe in Feng Shui or the concept of chi must concede that there are colors, music, décor and furniture arrangements that put people in a better mood and increase productivity.
For people who do subscribe to the theory of Feng Shui, it goes deeper than that. Feng means wind, and Shui means water – both elements of good fortune. To analyze the Feng Shui of any given space, one would use a compass and the Bagua, a Feng Shui energy map consisting of an octagonal grid with the symbols of the I Ching. With these tools, you can determine the orientation of your space, and determine if things need to be moved or redesigned.
In the case of a locker room, for example, Feng Shui concepts indicate that a locker room should be in the northern part of the building, with more than one door and at least two windows, with both doors and windows located on the north and east sides. The air quality inside the locker room should be good, and ideally the lighting should not be fluorescent. As would be practical in a locker room anyway, Feng Shui experts recommend plenty of mirrors.
Of course, some people choose to buck the Feng Shui concept entirely. The Baltimore Ravens coach, for example, recently announced that he was using “reverse Feng Shui,” putting extremely competitive players beside each other to create drama and disrupt the energy of the room. In reality the antics of these two, as they try to outdo and annoy each other, has actually been entertaining for the other players, who can’t wait to see what will happen next. So the moral of that story, perhaps, is that the best way to design your locker room is the way that works best for those using it.
Whether or not you choose to consider Feng Shui when you’re designing your locker room, Legacy Lockers is here to help you design the perfect space to fit your needs. From luxury lockers, to locker room furniture and design advice from experts in locker room design, Our locker manufacturing company has what you need to make your locker room a success. Stay tuned to this blog for more information and ideas, and connect with our online community by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.