Online Vastu Floor Plan — A Buyer's Checklist Before You Pay

Editorial commentary, not professional architectural advice. We are one of the providers in this market — read this checklist with the appropriate skepticism, and apply it to us as well as to others.

The online Vastu floor plan market has expanded faster than its quality bar. There are honest providers — and there are PDF mills that produce a generic 30×40 sketch with a kitchen drawn in the south-east and call it Vastu-compliant.

This is a buyer's checklist. It is vendor-neutral. Apply it to any provider, including GrehYug, before you part with money.

1. Does the provider declare which "north" they used?

The first question is also the most useful filter.

Mayamata Ch. 6 establishes orientation by the gnomon (śaṅku) method — true astronomical direction, not magnetic. Modern providers usually use GPS or compass headings. Both are acceptable, but the declination between magnetic and true north varies across India.

If a vendor cannot tell you whether they used true or magnetic north, and whether they applied a declination correction for your location, the entire maṇḍala overlay on your plan may be off by 4–8°. That is enough to move the kitchen out of agni.

Ask this question first. A vendor who answers cleanly — "GPS heading, declination corrected to 1.5°W for your PIN" or "we use magnetic and accept the 1.5° drift" — has earned the next question.

2. Does each finding cite a classical source?

Vastu is not a single text. It is a tradition that spans Vedic dwelling hymns, Shulba geometry, Mayamata, Manasara, Brihat Samhita, and a long list of regional commentaries.

A finding like "kitchen south-east — Mayamata Ch. 26" is verifiable. "Kitchen south-east" by itself is folklore.

A serious online Vastu floor plan should be able to attach a source to every directive. Ours does — see the format on our Vastu report. We have written about the underlying classical chain in Vedic Roots of Vastu.

If a vendor's report has no source citations, you have no way to verify their work, and no way to tell whether two of their findings are in tension with each other.

3. Is the output a sanction drawing or a draft?

This is where the market gets the most slippery.

A municipal sanction drawing is a stamped document produced by a licensed architect and submitted to the local authority. An "online Vastu floor plan" is almost never a sanction drawing — and it should not be sold as one.

Our own posture is unambiguous: every output we produce is a conceptual layout draft. It is editorial. It requires a licensed architect's review. We say this on every PDF, in every output, on the products page, and on the auto-plan generator itself.

If a vendor implies that their PDF can be handed to a contractor for foundation work, that vendor is either confused or dishonest.

4. Does the provider acknowledge tradeoffs?

A real plot rarely satisfies every classical rule. The constraint set is large enough that some rules will conflict on most plots — kitchen-in-south-east will sometimes clash with stair-not-in-north-east on a small plot, or master-bedroom-in-south-west will compete with parking position.

An honest report names the unresolved tradeoffs. A dishonest one buries them under a "Vastu score" of 95%.

Look for a section in the output titled something like "What this plan could not resolve" or "Tradeoffs and approximations." If it is missing, that does not mean the plan is bad — it means the report is incomplete.

5. Is the orientation tested against the plot's actual situation?

A plot does not exist in isolation. It has a road on one side, neighbours on others, a slope, possibly a water channel, a high-tension line, or a temple opposite the entry. Mayamata Ch. 8 (sometimes Ch. 9) and Brihat Samhita Ch. 53 both treat these site features as part of the planning input.

A vendor that asks only for plot dimensions and BHK is leaving site context on the floor. We take it at the auto-plan generator — the form has fields for road width, jurisdiction, and surrounding context — but we are still missing some of the slope and survey factors that need a site visit.

Ask the vendor: does their workflow include site context, or only plot dimensions?

6. Does the report handle owner-specific factors?

Āyādi Ṣaḍvarga — yoni, vyaya, ṛkṣa, and the rest — depends on the owner's nakshatra. The Brihat Samhita timing layer depends on the owner's intended muhūrta date.

A serious provider will ask for the owner's birth nakshatra (or birth details to derive it) and for candidate dates for foundation and gṛha-praveśa. Our own Vedic birth chart tool feeds the nakshatra into Āyādi, and our Karaṇa checker handles the muhūrta side.

A provider that produces the same Vastu PDF for any two clients is not doing the owner-specific layer.

7. Is there a visible architect handoff?

The honest endpoint of an online Vastu floor plan is a meeting with a licensed architect. The vendor's job is to produce a draft good enough to start that meeting — sourced, oriented correctly, with tradeoffs declared.

Our own output explicitly closes with a recommendation to take the draft to a licensed architect. We do not pretend the draft is sufficient on its own. Vendors who position their PDF as the final deliverable are not doing right by the buyer.

8. Is the price proportionate to the work?

This is more a sanity check than a rule. A real Vastu reading involves:

• correctly oriented plot drawing
• maṇḍala overlay
• room-by-room directional check with sources
• door, window, stair check
• owner-specific Āyādi
• muhūrta candidate dates
• tradeoff declaration

That is several hours of work even with software assistance. A ₹99 PDF is going to be a template. A ₹50,000 PDF without architect involvement is overcharging. The honest middle is generally the few-thousand-rupee range — and our pricing sits inside that band.

What to send the provider

If you are commissioning an online Vastu floor plan, send:

1. plot dimensions (width × depth in feet, or the survey number)
2. plot facing (or, better, a photo of the road and a GPS pin)
3. road width
4. jurisdiction / PIN code
5. desired BHK and any non-negotiable constraints (e.g., grandparent on ground floor)
6. owner's birth nakshatra (or full birth details)
7. candidate dates for foundation and gṛha-praveśa
8. any site features the satellite cannot see — slope, water channel, neighbour's septic tank, temple opposite

A provider that wants only items 1–5 is doing a generic plan. A provider that wants all eight is doing the work.

How GrehYug applies this checklist to ourselves

We try to pass our own checklist:

• We declare orientation source on the report.
• Every finding cites Mayamata, Manasara, Brihat Samhita, Atharva Veda, Shulba Sūtra, or "no classical source applicable."
• Every output says: editorial draft, requires licensed architect review.
• The report carries a tradeoffs-and-approximations section.
• Site context is collected on the form.
• Owner nakshatra and muhūrta dates feed dedicated tools.
• We point users at architects rather than at contractors.

We are not perfect. The slope and survey-number layer needs a site visit we cannot do remotely. We say so.

How this shapes a GrehYug-generated plan

When you commission a Vastu report or an auto-plan draft from us, the deliverable is meant to pass this same checklist. If you find a place where it does not, write to us. The honest answer is sometimes "we do not have that yet, here is the workaround" rather than "we are perfect."

Sources used in this article

• Mayamata Ch. 6 (orientation), Ch. 7 (maṇḍala), Ch. 8 (site testing), Ch. 26 (residential proportion)
• Manasara residential and door/window chapters
• Brihat Samhita Ch. 53 (residential), Ch. 98–100 (muhūrta)
• Atharva Veda 3.12, 9.3 — Śālā Sūkta
• Rig Veda 7.54–7.55 — Vāstoṣpati hymns