East vs West Facing Villa: Which Is Right for Your Family?

Ask 10 Bangalore home-buying families about facing direction, and you will get 10 different degrees of conviction. A few will believe it is the only criterion they will consider – they won’t even look at a plot that faces the “wrong way”. Many care about resale value primarily, having heard stories that east-facing plots retain their price better. And many are honestly baffled about the hullabaloo, beyond knowing that it is important to their parents.

All three opinions are valid. Facing direction is at the crossroads of Vastu Shastra, sensible natural lighting, and familial considerations, and rarely can you optimize for just one.

In this article, we take a closer look at what it actually means to live in an east or west-facing villa, what the Vastu concepts behind these recommendations actually are, and how to approach this if your family disagrees on this front.

What “Facing Direction” Actually Means

Before delving further into East vs. West, let’s define what it really means because it’s the primary area of confusion.

The facing of a villa refers to the direction the main entrance door faces – not the back of the house and not what direction the bedroom window happens to face. So if the main entrance door opens towards the east, towards the sun rising just outside the door, it’s an east-facing villa. The same is true for west, north and south-facing plots.

In a gated villa township, plot direction is typically determined by the master plan layout – the roads, the placement of the clubhouse, and the site plan overall will decide the orientation of the plot. This is something you need to determine early, as you usually cannot change the direction; it is a fixed property of the unit when shortlisting.

East-Facing Villas: The Traditional Preference

In Vastu, the east signifies the rising sun; thereby, the new beginning, energy, and influx of positive vibes in the house. This is precisely why east-facing properties are high in demand, more so for Indian, especially joint family, property ownership, where it’s the only genuine, not optional, criterion for short-listing properties.

The direct implications are that on a practical basis, an east-facing villa benefits from morning sunlight that streams in the primary entrance and front-facing rooms. The impact of the same is

Morning light reaches living spaces early. With the living room, the formal dining room or a downstairs study fronting the east side of the house, you have bright, low light in the morning and a gentler light than one might expect. When the sun is high in the sky and directly overhead at its peak brightness in the afternoon, the front of the house does not receive that blinding glare that a west-facing front door receives.

Energy efficiency tends to be slightly better. East-facing houses usually receive less heat in the afternoons than the west-facing houses. The sun in the west of Bangalore can sometimes be particularly strong, especially between February and May. The result is a slightly cooler house in the hottest part of the day.

Vastu placement of rooms is more straightforward. Traditional Vastu principles propose the kitchen on the south-east corner of a house; the master bedroom on the south-west corner, and the entrance and the living areas toward the north/ east. For an east-facing plot, there is generally less deviation from these guidelines to achieve these configurations, simply because the facing of the plot is more suited to these principles.

For families, where an elder member in the household has rigid Vastu beliefs, an east-facing villa would invariably be a far more natural choice from both a practicality and a domestic harmony point of view.

West-Facing Villas: Often Underrated

West-facing villas suffer from a sort of “bad rap” which may not be justified. A lot of people discount west-facing plots instinctively, believing them to be against Vastu. However, ancient Vastu principles don’t entirely condemn them. They merely insist on a more conscious planning of the interiors. Entrance positioning and bedroom placement are particularly critical in west-facing sites.

There are real practical advantages worth weighing:

Evening light works well for households that are out during the day. However, if all the other family members will be out for the whole day till evening, the exposure to afternoon and evening sun to the west-facing villa will even turn out to be advantageous; it is exactly at the time when the family members return and are there to use the living areas, that the house receives the warmth of golden rays, instead of the wasted empty morning rays.

Often available at a relatively better price point. Since it is human nature for a market to prefer east-facing plots, the market may offer west-facing plots in a similar township at a somewhat lower price. If the Vastu concerns are not extremely great, the buyer would have reason to think about this, especially if the price saving enables them to buy a larger plot elsewhere or a more efficient floor layout.

Vastu-compliant design is achievable with the right adjustments. You can still have good Vastu principles within a west-facing house, provided you have placed the main door in the western side of the western wall (the northwest part of a west-facing wall is preferred over southwest), have the kitchen in the south-east, regardless of the main door direction, and have the master bedroom in the south-west of the plot. None of these placements has anything to do with the main door facing; they all deal with the positioning of a room within the plot, something that a good architect can take care of on any facing.

The main issue with west-facing houses is asking the right questions before they’ve been built. Not “is this Vastu compliant” but “where exactly is the kitchen/master bedroom/main door placed within this individual unit”. A well-designed west-facing house can address most of the Vastu priorities. A badly designed east-facing house may flout many.

Kitchen Orientation: Often More Important Than Front-Door Direction

An observation that often gets ignored in the east-vs-west discussion: For many families who adhere to Vastu, a more important element is the direction of the kitchen than the direction of the entrance.

The SE corner of a house is said to be the area of Agni (fire), so a kitchen conventionally placed there is favorable for the house, regardless of the house direction being east or west. So whether it’s east-facing or west-facing doesn’t prevent the placement of the kitchen at SE. You can still have an SE kitchen on an east-facing and a west-facing plot. It is all dependent on the architect having placed the kitchen at SE as part of the interior floor plan.

When reviewing floor plans for a villa, one can always list a line item for ‘kitchen placement’ to be assessed separately from direction. An apparently west-facing house with an SE kitchen, a SW bedroom, and a logically placed door could often tick more Vastu boxes than an east-facing one that wasn’t well-divided.

Master Bedroom Placement: The Other Major Filter

Other than the main door entry direction and placement of the kitchen, the master bedroom location is usually the third most important Vastu aspect raised by the family.

The southwest part of the house is generally designated as the preferred location for the master bedroom in Vastu, relating to stability, strength, and authority within the home for the head of the household. This holds true for a villa regardless of whether the house itself faces east or west; it is about placement relative to the four corners of the property rather than the direction of the main door.

In multi-level villas such as G+2 units in township villa development, things become a little more complex as the master bedroom might be located on a higher level and not the ground floor. The recommendation is still generally in the southwest part of the level in which the master bedroom is located in these cases.

When comparing the floor plans on offer of houses of different directions, be sure to ask precisely where the master bedroom is in relation to the directions of the compass on the site.

How Families Actually Resolve This Disagreement

For many households, the discussion about the direction of facing has nothing really to do with facing. It has more to do with the battle of generations-parents with Vastu as an unchangeable condition, and a child (often the one paying) who is indifferent and prioritises floor plan, or cost, or plot size.

A few approaches that tend to work:

Separate “facing direction” from “Vastu compliance” as two different questions. As described earlier, a strategically placed west-facing villa can, quite often, be more Vastu-compliant inside than a wrongly designed east-facing one. Discussing concrete, room positioning-kitchen, bedroom, and entrance position, one may often find consensus quicker than discussions on the theoretical merits of “east v/s west”.

Get the floor plan reviewed by a Vastu consultant before finalising, regardless of facing direction. This also takes us out of the black and white realm of good east/bad west, into the much more productive realm of “which exact unit, in which exact block, offers the optimal layout inside.” It’s something that many of the more serious villa buyers will do, almost as a standard prerequisite for booking a villa, much like checking the builder’s credentials, or RERA registration number, etc.

Weigh the facing direction against the things that are harder to change later. Plot size, clubhouse. However, other considerations such as accessibility and location, view (forest setting compared to looking directly onto a road), and the layout (flexible in design terms) will have greater impact on lifestyle over a ten- to fifteen-year period than an aspect direction alone. If the only east-facing available is much smaller and has a less practical layout than a west-facing one, it could be debatable whether it is a worthwhile compromise given what is really required.

What to Check When You’re Comparing Floor Plans

If facing direction is an issue with your family, then here’s a checklist to apply while going through floor plans before they make it onto your short list.

Confirm the real compass direction of the main entrance (Don’t rely on the direction of the road and confirm with sales the site plan).

Kitchen placement should be considered independent of the facing direction.

The master bedroom should be considered independent of ‘what floor’ it is and where it actually is on that floor.

Enquire about whether they have multiple facing directions available for a single villa typology – to ensure that one doesn’t have to compromise on the size or plan to get their preferred facing direction.

If it’s a definite must-have within your family that the villa must be Vastu-compliant, then try to get the exact unit’s plan inspected rather than take the facing direction as a proxy.

Most thoughtful villa townships offer both east and west-facing villas for their different villa typologies, so often, you can get your required facing direction without compromising on floor plan size, if you ask specifically what is on offer for each facing direction.

The Practical Answer

There is no universally correct East vs West facing, only a correct facing for your family, given how strictly your family adheres to Vastu, how you use light and space throughout the day, and which floor plan is actually available in that facing. What is far more critical than facing, however, is the room placement (kitchen, master bedroom, entry), as well as the fit of the overall floor plan to your family’s lifestyle. A community that provides numerous floor plan typologies and a variety of facing options allows you to locate one that fits without making any other major sacrifices.

Compare floor plans and facing options across villa typologies: AR Belle Vie — 4 & 5 BHK villas in Whitefield, Bangalore. Sereno, Pristino, Floria, and Milano typologies, 2,650–4,000 sq.ft.