Does Front Door Aligned with Back Door Drain Wealth? 前後通透 · Layout myths

What classical practice says

This is the same general principle as the staircase rule: qi entering the home through its primary intake (front door) should disperse through the floor plan before exiting. A direct sight-line from front door to back door means qi enters and exits without circulating — the home is a tube rather than a vessel.

The pop framing — “wealth flows in the front and out the back” — captures this reasonably well. The classical mechanism is qi-flow continuity, and the wealth-related register specifically is most affected because wealth depends on accumulation (qi settling and consolidating) which the tube-configuration prevents.

Note: this is different from good ventilation. Cross-ventilation through windows is a real and beneficial environmental property, and you don’t want to block it. The concern is specifically about visual / qi line-of-sight from entry door to exit door / large window. Ventilation can flow without a direct unbroken line of sight.

When the rule applies most strongly

Strongest concern:

• Front door and back door directly aligned (visible through the home from one to the other in a single straight line).
• The aligned doors are within ~12 metres of each other.
• No intervening furniture or partial walls.

Front door aligned with a large rear window has similar but milder effect — the window doesn’t actively expel qi the way a door does, but the visual sight-line still indicates poor circulation.

What to do instead

Corrections in priority order:

1. Console table or piece of furniture placed between the two doors that breaks the visual line. The furniture must be substantial enough to register as “stop point” (a coffee table is too low; a tall bookshelf or console works).
2. Rug pattern change mid-corridor if there’s a long hallway between the two doors. Mid-corridor zone change disrupts the “tube” reading.
3. Plant placement at one of the doors (not blocking the door itself, but in the line of sight several feet inward). A tall floor plant works well.
4. Curtain or panel over the back door / large rear window when the home isn’t actively using the rear access. This is the lightest intervention.

None of these block ventilation. All of them break the visual sight-line, which is the classical mechanism.

• Place a console table, plant, or screen between the aligned doors to break the line of sight
• Use a curtain or panel on the back door / large rear window when not in active use
• Maintain ventilation through other windows / openings — the rule is about line-of-sight, not airflow
• Skip object-based “cures” — the correction is structural / visual interruption