How we calculate your colours
Feng shui practitioners don't agree on one way to pick a lucky colour. Rather than pretend otherwise, this page lists every rule the app uses, so you can see exactly why it suggests what it does. It's for reflection and fun, not a prediction.
1 · The Five Elements
Each colour belongs to an element: Wood greens, Fire reds, pinks and purples, Earth yellows, beiges and browns, Metal whites, silvers and golds, Water blacks and blues. Elements feed each other in the generating cycle (Wood → Fire → Earth → Metal → Water → Wood) and restrain each other in the controlling cycle (Wood → Earth → Water → Fire → Metal → Wood). Sources disagree on a few colours. We file grey under Metal and charcoal under Water.
2 · The popular daily rule (五行穿衣)
The rule most Chinese websites use looks only at the element of the day's earthly branch. Because there are 12 branches, it repeats every 12 days and is the same for everyone. We show it as “Today's lucky colour” until you add your birth date.
| Grade | Element | Example: a Wood (卯) day |
|---|---|---|
| 大吉 Most auspicious | the one the day generates | Fire — reds |
| 次吉 Auspicious | the same as the day | Wood — greens |
| 平平 Neutral | the one the day controls | Earth — yellows |
| 慎用 Use sparingly | the one that controls the day | Metal — whites |
| 忌用 Avoid | the one that generates the day | Water — blacks, blues |
Other well-known sites rank the same day differently, and some nearly reverse this order. We found no classical source for these five grades, so we treat the rule as a modern convention.
3 · Your Four Pillars (八字)
Your birth moment becomes four pairs of a heavenly stem and an earthly branch: year, month, day and hour. The stem of your day pillar is your Day Master, the element that represents you. Some details matter:
- The year changes at 立春 (start of spring, around 4 February), not at Lunar New Year. The month changes at each of the 12 “節” solar terms. These are exact astronomical moments, so we compare your birth instant against them, wherever in the world you were born.
- Day and hour follow your birthplace's clock, including historical daylight saving (for example Shanghai's summer time in 1986–91, or Kuala Lumpur at UTC+7:30 before 1982).
- The late 子 hour (23:00–23:59): schools disagree on whether the new day starts at 23:00 or at midnight. You choose. Either way, the 子 hour's stem comes from the following day.
- True solar time (真太阳时) is optional. It shifts your birth time by longitude and the equation of time. Clocks in Singapore and Malaysia run 30–60+ minutes ahead of the sun, so this can change your hour pillar.
- No birth time? We read three pillars. Your Day Master is unaffected, unless you were born on a solar-term day, in which case we'll let you know.
The calendar math runs on lunar-javascript (MIT licence, 6tail) and our own day-pillar code. Our tests check them against each other on thousands of random dates.
4 · Strength and favourable elements
Our default reading style is balance + climate (扶抑 + 调候). Schools genuinely disagree about how to choose the “useful god” (用神), so treat this as one method among several.
- Weigh every element in your chart. Stems count 1. Hidden stems in each branch count 1 / 0.5 / 0.3 (main, middle, residual). The month branch counts double, because the season shapes the chart (月令).
- Support = your own element + the element that feeds you. Drain = the elements you feed, control, or are controlled by. Support ÷ (support + drain) of 0.50 or more is strong, below 0.36 is gentle, and anything in between is balanced.
- Gentle charts favour Resource (印) and Companion (比劫) elements. Strong charts favour Power (官杀), Wealth (财) and Output (食伤). Balanced charts favour whatever is scarcest.
- Climate: if you were born in winter (亥子丑), Fire is added. If you were born in summer (巳午未), Water is added.
5 · Your daily ranking
Each day, every element gets a score. The highest becomes your main colour, the next your accent, and the lowest is the one to go easy on.
| Ingredient | Points |
|---|---|
| Your key favourable element / other favourable | +3.0 / +2.6 |
| Element your chart already has plenty of | −3 |
| Popular day rule (大吉 → 忌用) | +1 … −1 |
| Today's stem presses on you (官杀 day) → Resource | +1.2 |
| Wealth or Output day for a gentle chart → Companion / Resource | +1.2 |
| Today clashes your day branch → the bridging element (通关) | +1.5 |
| Occasion (work → Power + Resource, deals → Wealth, date → Output, exams → Resource, friends → Companion) | +2 (or +1 if unfavourable) |
We also list how today's branch interacts with yours: clashes (冲), combinations (合), half-harmonies (半合), punishments (刑), harms (害) and breaks (破). Every sentence in the app is built from these computed facts.
6 · From colours to clothes
Each day gets one outfit: your top-ranked element as the main colour, the next as an accent, and a neutral base from an element that isn't today's weakest. We shade them for the weather: lighter tints on hot days (30 °C+), deeper ones on cool days (15 °C or below). The recommendation comes from these rules alone, not from what's in your wardrobe. Practitioners accept accessory-level compliance, so a scarf, bag or socks in your colour counts.
7 · Privacy
Your birth details are saved on this device. If you turn on reminders, our server keeps only your chart summary (Day Master and lucky elements) and your reminder time, never your birth date. If you join a waitlist, we keep your email only to tell you about it. “Delete all my data” in Settings removes all of it.