Home Assistant Dashboards

Home Assistant Dashboard Design: The Complete Guide

Your dashboard is the control center of your smart home. A well-designed one means less time in apps and more time enjoying your automation. Here is how to build dashboards that are functional, fast, and genuinely useful.

Part of our Home Assistant Ultimate Guide

~18 min read Updated March 2026

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Why Dashboards Matter

A smart home with 30 devices and no dashboard is just 30 separate apps. The entire point of Home Assistant is unifying control into a single interface that shows you what matters and lets you act on it in one tap. A good dashboard eliminates the need to open five different manufacturer apps to check your home.

Unified Control

Every device from every brand on a single screen. Zigbee lights, Wi-Fi cameras, Z-Wave locks, and cloud thermostats, all in one place.

At-a-Glance Status

See immediately if the garage is open, who is home, current energy usage, and whether any sensors are in an alert state.

Family Accessible

A well-designed dashboard means your family can control the house without understanding the automation engine behind it.

The real test of a good dashboard: Can your least technical family member walk up to the wall tablet and accomplish what they need in under 3 seconds? If yes, you nailed it. If they call your name instead, the dashboard needs work.

Default vs Custom Dashboards

Home Assistant auto-generates a default dashboard from all your discovered entities. It works, but it is a junk drawer. Here is how the two modes compare and when to switch.

Default (Auto-generated)

Zero configuration required, works immediately
Automatically adds new devices as you integrate them
Shows every entity including diagnostic junk you never need
No layout control; groups by integration, not room or function

Best for: Brand new installations where you are still adding devices and exploring.

Recommended

Custom (Manual)

Full control over layout, card types, and what appears
Organize by room, function, or person
Supports advanced cards (Mushroom, custom button-card, picture-elements)
Optimizable for different screen sizes (phone, tablet, wall panel)

Best for: Anyone with 10+ devices who wants a usable, family-friendly interface.

To create a custom dashboard: go to Settings > Dashboards > Add Dashboard. Give it a name, an icon, and choose "Start with an empty dashboard." You can keep the default dashboard around for reference while building your custom one.

Essential Dashboard Card Types

Home Assistant ships with dozens of built-in cards, and HACS adds hundreds more. You do not need all of them. These are the cards that cover 90% of what a household dashboard needs.

Entities Card

The workhorse. Shows a vertical list of entities with their current state and a toggle switch for binary devices. Use it for grouped controls like "Living Room Lights" or "All Locks." It is the most readable card for listing multiple devices of the same type.

Best for: Lists of lights, switches, fans, or locks grouped by room or function.

Glance Card

Compact grid of entities showing icon, name, and state. Great for a quick overview of sensors across the house. Tap to toggle or see details. Each entity gets a small column, so you can fit 4-8 per row depending on screen width.

Best for: Sensor overviews (temperature, humidity, door status), and status-at-a-glance rows at the top of a view.

Conditional Card

Shows or hides another card based on an entity state. Use it to surface important information only when it matters. For example: show a "Garage Door Open" warning banner only when the garage door sensor reports open. This keeps your dashboard clean during normal operation and attention-grabbing when something needs action.

Best for: Alert banners, weather warnings, open door notifications, device offline alerts.

Picture-Elements Card

Overlays entity icons and state badges on top of a background image. The classic use case is a floor plan of your home with light icons positioned where each room's lights actually are. Tap the living room light icon on the floor plan and it toggles the living room lights. Visually stunning but requires more setup (image creation, percentage-based positioning).

Best for: Floor plan dashboards, wall tablets where visual context matters, and impressing guests.

Mushroom Cards (HACS)

The most popular community card collection. Mushroom cards provide a modern, clean design language with chip-style status indicators, beautiful light and climate controls, and consistent styling across all card types. Install via HACS (Home Assistant Community Store). The Mushroom theme transforms the entire look of your dashboard with minimal configuration.

Best for: Anyone who wants a polished, modern dashboard without writing YAML. The single best upgrade you can make to your dashboard's appearance.

Room-by-Room Layout Strategy

The most intuitive dashboard layout organizes by room, with a "Home" overview tab as the default view. Here is a battle-tested structure that works for homes of any size.

Home Overview (Default Tab)

This is the landing page of your dashboard. It should answer the question "Is everything OK?" at a glance without needing to tap into anything.

Row 1: Person cards or Glance card showing who is home
Row 2: Conditional alert cards (open doors, offline devices, active weather alerts)
Row 3: Quick-action buttons (All Lights Off, Arm/Disarm, Goodnight Scene)
Row 4: Weather card + indoor climate summary

Room Tabs (One per Major Area)

Create a separate tab for each major area of your home. Each room tab follows the same internal structure for consistency.

Typical Room Tabs

Living Room
Kitchen
Master Bedroom
Office
Garage
Exterior / Yard

Each Room Tab Contains

Lights (Entities card with brightness sliders)
Climate (thermostat, temp/humidity sensors)
Media (if applicable, media player card)
Cameras (if applicable, picture-entity card)
Sensors (motion, door/window, leak)

Oklahoma-Specific Dashboard Additions

Living in Oklahoma means your dashboard should surface weather and storm information more prominently than a typical setup.

NWS Alerts sensor on the Home Overview tab with conditional formatting (red background during active warnings)
UPS battery status from the apcupsd or NUT integration, visible on the Overview tab
Safe room sensor panel (door status, temperature, humidity) as a conditional card that only appears during severe weather
Power outage history graph showing the last 7 days of UPS events

See our Oklahoma Weather Alerts Guide for the full NWS automation setup.

Wall Tablet Setup

A wall-mounted tablet running your Home Assistant dashboard is the most satisfying smart home upgrade. It turns your dashboard from something you pull up on your phone into a permanent, always-visible control panel. Walk by, tap, done.

Recommended Tablets

Tablet	Screen	Price	Best For
Amazon Fire HD 8	8" 1280x800	$60-$80	Best value; hallway or bedroom panels
Amazon Fire HD 10	10.1" 1920x1200	$100-$130	Kitchen or living room; readable from distance
Google Pixel Tablet	10.95" 2560x1600	$350-$400	Premium option; doubles as smart display with dock
Lenovo Tab M10	10.1" 1920x1200	$120-$160	Good middle ground; better performance than Fire

Fully Kiosk Browser Setup

Fully Kiosk Browser is the standard app for turning a tablet into a dedicated Home Assistant kiosk. It locks the tablet to a single web page, prevents navigation to other apps, controls screen wake/sleep, and integrates with Home Assistant for remote management.

1 Install Fully Kiosk Browser from the Google Play Store (or sideload on Fire tablets via the APK).
2 Set the Start URL to your Home Assistant URL (e.g., http://homeassistant.local:8123/dashboard-tablet/).
3 Enable Motion Detection to wake the screen when someone approaches, and set a screen-off timer (30-60 seconds) to preserve the display.
4 Install the Fully Kiosk Browser integration in Home Assistant for remote control (screen on/off, brightness, reload, battery monitoring).
5 Mount the tablet using a wall mount bracket (VidaMount, iPort, or 3D-printed options) with a recessed USB cable for power.

Pro tip: Create a dedicated "Tablet" user account in Home Assistant with a limited dashboard that only shows the wall panel view. This prevents anyone from accidentally navigating to the admin settings from the wall panel, and it lets you track tablet logins separately in the audit log.

Mobile vs Tablet Optimization

A dashboard that looks great on a 10-inch wall tablet is often unusable on a phone, and vice versa. The key is building separate dashboards or using Home Assistant's panel mode and view visibility to adapt to screen size.

Phone Dashboard Tips

Single column layout, no horizontal grids
Large tap targets (minimum 44px per Google guidelines)
Fewer cards per view, prefer Mushroom chips for status
Use bottom tab navigation for room switching
Skip camera live streams; use snapshot images with tap-to-stream

Tablet/Wall Panel Tips

Use panel mode for a single-view, full-width layout
2-3 column grid layout works well on 10" screens
Camera live streams are appropriate on tablets with constant power
Side navigation or header tabs for room switching
Floor plan (picture-elements) really shines on larger screens

The simplest approach: create two dashboards. Set the phone dashboard as default for mobile users (Settings > Dashboards > set default) and point Fully Kiosk Browser at the tablet dashboard URL. Each is optimized for its screen without any compromise.

Dashboard Performance Tips

A slow dashboard destroys the experience. These optimizations keep your dashboards responsive, especially on lower-powered devices like Fire tablets.

Limit cards per view to under 20

Every card subscribes to entity state updates via WebSocket. More cards means more real-time data flowing to the browser. Split large views into tabs or use the Conditional card to hide cards that are not relevant right now.

Use `camera_view: auto` instead of `live`

Live camera streams are the single biggest performance drain. Use camera_view: auto to show a still image that updates periodically. Tap the card to open the live stream on demand.

Limit history graph time ranges

History graphs default to 24 hours, which is usually fine. Do not set them to 7 or 30 days on a dashboard. That forces HA to query and render thousands of data points on every page load. Keep long-term graphs on a separate "Analytics" tab.

Clear browser cache after updates

After a Home Assistant update, stale cached JavaScript can cause dashboard rendering issues. In Fully Kiosk Browser, go to Settings > Web Auto Reload > Clear Cache and set it to reload on a daily schedule. On phones, force-close the Companion App and reopen.

Disable animations on wall tablets

CSS animations and transitions look great on fast devices but can cause visible lag on Fire HD tablets. If your tablet dashboard feels sluggish, add card_mod styles to disable transitions, or choose Mushroom card variants that use minimal animation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about Home Assistant dashboard design and configuration.

What are the best Home Assistant dashboard cards for beginners?

Start with the Entities card (shows a list of devices with toggle switches), the Glance card (compact grid of sensor states), and the Button card (large tap targets for common actions like locking doors or turning off all lights). These three cover 80% of what most households need. Once you are comfortable, explore the Mushroom cards via HACS for a more polished look without writing any YAML.

What tablet should I use for a Home Assistant wall panel?

The Amazon Fire HD 8 ($60-$80) is the most popular choice for wall-mounted dashboards because of its low cost, adequate screen size, and compatibility with Fully Kiosk Browser. The Fire HD 10 ($100-$130) is better if the panel will be viewed from a distance (hallways, kitchens). For a premium option, the Google Pixel Tablet with its charging speaker dock doubles as a smart display when not showing your dashboard. Avoid iPads unless you already own one, as they are overkill for a single-app kiosk.

Can I have multiple dashboards in Home Assistant?

Yes. Home Assistant supports unlimited dashboards, and each can be assigned a different default view per user or device. A common setup is three dashboards: a tablet dashboard (optimized for wall panel with large buttons), a phone dashboard (single-column layout for mobile), and an admin dashboard (detailed sensor data, automations, and system health for the person managing the system). You can also create dashboards per floor or per room if your home is large enough to warrant it.

Why is my Home Assistant dashboard slow?

Dashboard performance issues typically come from three sources: (1) Too many cards loading at once — use the Conditional card or separate views/tabs to reduce what renders on screen. (2) Heavy integrations polling frequently — camera streams and history graphs are the biggest offenders; use camera_view: live sparingly and limit history graph time ranges to 24 hours. (3) Browser limitations — older Fire tablets can struggle with 30+ cards; keep wall panel dashboards under 20 cards per view and disable animations. Clearing your browser cache on the tablet often fixes sudden slowdowns after an update.

How do I back up my Home Assistant dashboard configuration?

Dashboard YAML is included in the standard Home Assistant backup (Settings > System > Backups). If you use the default Lovelace storage mode, your dashboard config lives in .storage/lovelace inside the HA config directory. If you switch to YAML mode, the config lives in ui-lovelace.yaml (or whatever file you specify), which you can version-control with Git. For critical dashboards, we recommend YAML mode so you can track changes over time and roll back if an edit breaks something.

Want a Professional Dashboard Setup?

We design and install custom Home Assistant dashboards for Oklahoma homeowners. Wall tablet mounting, Fully Kiosk configuration, Mushroom themes, floor plan dashboards, and family-friendly layouts that everyone in the house can use.

Book Free Consultation Smart Home Services

Or call us at (405) 785-7705