Vastu Check for Floor Plan: Step-by-Step Method and Checklist

A Vastu check for floor plan drawings comes down to three steps: fix true north on the plan, find the centre of the house, and lay the eight directions (or a 3×3 grid) over it. Then read each room against what Vastu traditionally suggests for its zone. Most mistakes happen in the first step, not the last.

Below is the method we would use on any plan, from a 30×40 G+1 in Indore to a 2BHK brochure in Pune, plus a printable checklist.

Key takeaways

• Get north right first. A plan rotated by even a few degrees can move a corner room into the next zone.
• Magnetic and true north are close in India, roughly 2 degrees or less in most cities. Steel and wiring near your phone cause far bigger errors.
• Find the centre of the actual outline. For an L-shaped plan, the centre is not the middle of the plot.
• Vastu is traditional guidance, and traditions disagree on some rooms. Structure, fire safety, light, ventilation and your local bye-laws come first, always.

How do you check the Vastu direction for a home on a plan?

Start with the north arrow on the drawing, then confirm it on site or on a satellite map before you trust it. Brochure plans in particular often carry a decorative arrow, and the same layout is frequently mirrored for the other wing of a tower.

Here is the order we use:

1. Find the north arrow. Every proper plan has one. If yours doesn't, ask the architect or builder before doing anything else.
2. Cross-check with a satellite map. Open your site on Google Maps or any map app with north at the top. Match the road and the plot edges to the plan. If the plan's arrow disagrees with the map by more than a few degrees, the arrow is wrong.
3. Check on site with a phone compass. Calibrate the app, lay the phone flat with one edge against a wall, and keep a step away from columns, steel grills, the lift, cars, fridges and switchboards. An RCC column is full of steel. Take readings at three spots and use the one that repeats.
4. Mark the north line on your copy of the plan. Draw it through the whole sheet with a ruler. You will draw everything else from it.

Magnetic north or true north: which one does Vastu use?

Practitioners differ on which north to use, but in India the gap between the two is small. Magnetic declination (the angle between compass north and true north) is about 2 degrees or less across most of the country.

We computed declination for 20 October 2026 with the coefficients of NOAA's World Magnetic Model (WMM2025, the current version) for a few cities. Delhi comes out at about 1.3° east, Mumbai at roughly zero, Ahmedabad and Indore under 1° east, and Bengaluru and Chennai at about 1° west. Srinagar is the outlier at close to 3°. NOAA notes that smartphones carry the WMM to estimate bearing, and you can check your own town on the NOAA magnetic field calculators page.

Our view: a 1–2 degree gap rarely moves a room into another zone. A bad reading near a steel door can.

How do you find the centre (Brahmasthan) of an irregular plan?

For a square or rectangular outline, the centre is where the two diagonals cross. For anything else, split the outline into rectangles and find the balance point of the whole shape.

1. Decide what you are measuring. Plot boundary or built outline? Schools of Vastu disagree here. For a flat, most people check the flat's own outline, not the tower.
2. Split the shape. An L-shaped plan becomes two rectangles. Mark the diagonal crossing of each.
3. Weight by area. Join the two centres with a line. The centre of the whole plan sits on that line, closer to the bigger rectangle, in proportion to their areas.
4. Or use the cardboard method. Stick a to-scale print on stiff card, cut out the outline and balance it on a pin. Crude, but it works for odd shapes.

Some practitioners include every projection, even a bay window; others ignore anything that adds no usable floor area. Write down which rule you used.

How do you overlay the Vastu zones on a floor plan?

Divide the outline into a 3×3 grid, or draw eight 45-degree wedges from the centre, and label each zone from your north line. Both methods are in common use, and they can disagree for corner rooms when the house is not square to north.

• The 3×3 grid. Divide each side into three equal parts and join them: the centre, four sides and four corners. This is the simplified form of the Vastu Purusha Mandala most homeowners use.
• Directional wedges. From the centre, draw lines at 22.5°, 67.5° and so on around the compass. Each wedge covers one of the eight directions. Some modern practitioners go further and use 16 zones of 22.5° each.

If your plot runs, say, 20 degrees off north, the grid follows the walls while the wedges follow the compass, so a toilet can be "north-west" on one and "west" on the other. Just say which method you used.

Vastu checklist for house plans (printable)

What Vastu traditionally suggests for each part of the house, with a practical fallback where the plan cannot comply. Where traditions differ, both views are listed. Print it and tick it against your plan.

Item 16 is where Vastu and building rules meet. The Model Building Bye-Laws 2016 from the Ministry of Urban Development set the minimum window area of a room at one-tenth of the floor area in a dry hot climate and one-sixth in a wet hot one (MBBL 2016, clause 4.30.1.1). Your city's own bye-laws apply, but the point holds: you can't close up a south window for Vastu if the room then fails on light and air.

How do I know if my house is Vastu compliant?

Check each zone against the checklist and see what matches; there is no single pass mark. Few city homes match every line, flats especially, so most practitioners focus on the entrance, kitchen, master bedroom, toilets and centre.

Sort each mismatch into one of three piles. Swap the use (study and guest room trade places) costs nothing on paper. Change the plan (a toilet in the north-east, a staircase through the centre) belongs at the preliminary design stage, before drawings go for sanction; our guide to the design approval process and sign-off stages explains why late changes cost the most. Live with it applies to a ready flat, where structure and plumbing are fixed.

Can you do an online Vastu check for a floor plan?

Yes. An online Vastu check for floor plan images works if the plan is clear and top-down and you set north correctly yourself. That is how we built Vastu Analysis in Velocity's AI Suite: the method above, done on your uploaded plan.

1. Upload a top-down floor plan as JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 12 MB.
2. Turn the compass ring until North on the ring matches North on your plan.
3. Choose which way the main door faces. Stand in the doorway looking out: the direction you face is the way the door faces.
4. Add the plot size, your priorities and the owner's birth date if you want to (all optional).
5. Each zone is checked against the classical rules for its direction.
6. Read the report: zone scores, an overall Vastu score out of 100, problems, remedies and colours that suit the home. Reports stay in your account.

What it can't do: it reads only what is drawn. If the sump, septic tank, site slope or neighbouring roads aren't on the plan, the report cannot judge them. It trusts the north you set, so a wrong arrow gives a confident wrong answer. And it doesn't check structure, fire safety or bye-laws. The remedies are traditional suggestions, not repairs.

Once the plan is settled, seeing it in 3D helps the family agree. Our guide to turning a floor plan into a 3D model with AI covers how.

FAQ

Before you sign off the plan

Fix north and the centre yourself, then mark every checklist line before your next meeting with the architect. For a second reading, upload the same plan to Vastu Analysis at Velocity AOI and compare its zone scores with your marks.