How to create a beautiful Power BI Dashboard/Report?

[DavidAnthony]

Hi there,

Designing a dashboard can feel intimidating, especially if you’re aiming for something that’s both functional and visually appealing. But here’s the good news: it’s not as hard as you think! With a few smart design choices, you can create dashboards that are clean, professional, and easy to understand. I’ve been designing dashboards for a while now, and I’m excited to share my go-to tips that will elevate your dashboard game. Let’s dive in!

1. Keep Your Background Clean and Simple

The foundation of a great dashboard starts with its background. Here’s my rule of thumb:

1. Dashboard Background: Choose a light, neutral color (like a soft gray or beige). This helps your visuals pop without overwhelming the viewer.
2. Visual Background: Set the background of each visual tile to white. This clean canvas makes your charts stand out, no matter what colors you use for the data.
3. No Borders or Shadows: Skip borders and shadows on your visual tiles. They add unnecessary clutter and distract from the data.
4. Big No-No: Never use a picture as your dashboard background, it’s a recipe for chaos! Keep it simple to let your data shine.

2. Stick to a Limited Color Palette

Color can make or break your dashboard’s readability. Here’s how to get it right:

1. Max 3 Main Colors: Pick three primary colors for your dashboard and stick to them. If you need more, use different shades of those three colors for variety.
2. Set Up a Theme: Predefine your colors in the “Customize Theme” settings of your dashboard tool (like Power BI). This ensures consistency across all visuals.
3. Find Beautiful Palettes: Head to colorhunt.co and check out their “Trending Palettes” section. They have tons of ready-made color combos that look amazing and professional.

3. Choose the Best Default Font

Typography matters more than you might think. A good font ensures your text is readable and polished:

1. Go-To Font: Use Segoe UI. It’s clean, modern, and highly readable even at small sizes, perfect for dashboards.
2. Avoid Uneven Fonts: Steer clear of fonts where letters and numbers have inconsistent widths (like Comic Sans). They make your dashboard look unprofessional and hard to read.

4. Organize Navigation and Slicers Smartly

A well-organized dashboard makes navigation intuitive for users:

1. Group Slicers Together: Place all your navigation elements and slicers in one spot, either on the left side (like in the dashboard I shared in this post) or at the top (like in the one I commented on).
2. This keeps your dashboard tidy and ensures users can easily filter data without hunting around.

5. Follow the Z-Pattern for Layout

Arrange your dashboard elements based on how the human eye naturally moves, following a Z-pattern (from top-left to bottom-right):

1. Top-Left (Overview): Place the most important, high-level information here, like the dashboard title, key KPIs, or summary metrics.
2. Bottom-Right (Details): Save the detailed data, like tables for drilling down, for the bottom-right. This way, users get the big picture first before diving into specifics.

6. Let Your Dashboard Breathe with White Space

White space is your friend, it makes your dashboard feel airy and easy on the eyes:

1. Spacing Rule: Keep at least 10px of space between your graphs and visual elements. This prevents your dashboard from feeling cramped and helps users focus on each piece of data.

7. Declutter Ruthlessly

A clean dashboard is a usable dashboard. Remove anything that isn’t absolutely necessary:

1. Elements to Cut: Gridlines, axis titles, legends, tooltips, anything that can be removed without sacrificing clarity. If the data still makes sense without it, it doesn’t belong on your dashboard.
2. The goal is to keep things as minimal and distraction-free as possible while ensuring the story your data tells is crystal clear.

8. Get Inspired and Steal Colors Like a Pro

Need inspiration for your dashboard design? Here’s a hack:

1. Explore Samples: Visit Adobe Stock and search for “Dashboard” to find professionally designed examples.
2. Steal Colors: Install the Eyedropper Chrome extension (it’s trending for a reason!). Hover over any dashboard you love, grab the Hex Codes of the colors, and apply them to your own design. It’s a foolproof way to nail your color scheme.

Final Thoughts: Dashboard Design That Never Fails

With these tips, you’re well on your way to creating dashboards that are not only functional but also visually stunning. To recap: keep your backgrounds clean, limit your colors, choose a readable font, organize thoughtfully, follow the Z-pattern, add white space, declutter, and draw inspiration from the pros. Apply these steps, and I promise, your dashboard design will never go wrong.

Power BI Dashboard by Trung Dang from Flexa Intel

[Suvanu_0608]

The “clean background + limited colors” principle alone can completely change how professional a report looks. The Z-pattern and color palette advice are spot on. In projects with multiple KPI pages, I usually create a layout wireframe first. Tools like Mokkup.ai or Figma allow you to prototype KPI grids and page flow first, then bring the layout into Power BI once finalized. It’s been a time-saver for me.

[v-achippa · Accepted solution]

Hi @DavidAnthony,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community.

Thank you for sharing this. This kind of post is incredibly valuable to the community. I suggest turning this post into a blog post so that other community members can benefit from your experience more easily.

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Power-BI-Community-Blog/bg-p/community_blog 

Please consider marking this post as Accept as Solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Thanks and regards

Anjan Kumar Chippa

[ribisht17]

Good one! Thanks for sharing