Staircase Vastu: direction, turn and steps

Where the stair goes

• South, south-west or west of the plan. South-west is the strongest position.
• Never in the north-east, and never in the Brahmasthan — the centre of the house.
• Not directly facing the main door.
• An external stair belongs on the south or west side of the building.

How it should run

• Clockwise going up — north to east, east to south, south to west.
• An odd number of steps in each flight is the traditional preference.
• Landings should be in the south or west, not the north-east.
• Steps should be even in height, and the first and last step should not be a different size — a safety rule that happens to also be a Vastu one.

What must not be under the stairs

• A pooja space.
• A toilet.
• A kitchen or a cooking platform.
• A bed or a study desk in daily use.
• Storage, a shoe rack or a utility cupboard under the stairs is fine and is what most Indian houses do.

Check your own plan against this

Open the plan editor, set your plot size and the facing, and the Vastu checker marks each zone on the sheet — green where the room matches the convention, amber where it is borderline, red where it is wrong — with the reason written out next to it. Move the wall, and the check updates as you drag.

A note on how to use this

Vastu Shastra is a traditional Indian system of directional planning, not a building code. Plenty of its rules line up neatly with good tropical design — a south-east kitchen gets morning sun and keeps afternoon heat away from the living room, a north-east opening brings in soft light, heavy mass on the south-west shades the house through the hottest hours. Others are purely traditional.

Treat the checker in the editor the same way a structural engineer treats a rule of thumb: it tells you what the convention says, quickly, so you can decide what to follow and what to trade away. It will never stop you drawing the plan you want.