If there are no planets in a house, such as the 5th or 10th, how are its lord and colour used?
Every house has a sign number, and its lord sits somewhere in the chart. Find where that lord sits; the direction in which it sits is auspicious for you. Not every house has a planet, since there are only nine planets for twelve houses.
Related questions
Do the directions of the kundli houses shift when the rashis or planets in them change?
No. The 4th house is always North, the 1st East, the 10th South and the 7th West, with the sub-directions between them. Like water flowing in a river, planets and rashis keep moving, but the direction a house represents stays fixed whichever planet or rashi comes into it.
Each house of the kundli has a rashi in it. Does the rashi decide the direction?
No, the rashi plays no role here. The 4th house is North, the 1st house East, the 10th house South and the 7th house West, with the sub-directions in between. Real charts are then analysed, five a day from the student group, to decide each person's interior; the key is knowing what to do for exalted planets and what for debilitated ones.
For someone with no astrology background, what does an exalted or debilitated planet mean in practice?
Learn the twelve rashis in order and the rest is simple. If the Sun is written with rashi 1, it is exalted, very powerful, and blesses the house and direction it occupies. If the Sun sits with rashi 7, it is debilitated and very weak; if that falls in the 4th house (North), building a house in that direction ruins the person. Vastu without this is incomplete, which is why even a perfect East-facing house can fail.
How do we choose a direction when no planet in the chart is exalted and several planets sit in one direction?
First choose the direction of exalted planets. If none are exalted, go towards the direction where the benefic planets sit: Venus, Mercury, Moon and Jupiter are benefic, while Rahu, Ketu, Saturn, Sun and Mars are malefic. Then use the interior items, seed mantras, artifacts, statues, trees, colours and symbols, to strengthen the planets that are not exalted.
Should we follow the direction a planet rules or its position in the chart, for example an exalted Sun sitting in the West?
Follow the direction the planet rules: if the Sun is exalted, select the East even though it sits in the West of the chart. Also see where most benefic planets sit; two, three or even four directions can be favourable for one person.
The kundli chart was shown with directions. How are those directions used, and what can a kundli tell about a house?
Go by the houses, not the numbers written in them: the top house is the 1st house (East) and the 4th house is North. If the planets on the North side are strong, the North direction is very good for the person. A kundli can even reveal where a person's house is, where its door is, how many windows it has and where a nearby river, pond or temple lies, so a map of the house can be drawn without seeing it.