How to Change Background of Tableau Dashboard

Changing the background of your Tableau dashboard is one of the quickest ways to transform its look and feel from a default design into a polished, branded report. This simple adjustment improves visual appeal, reinforces brand identity, and can even help guide your audience's attention to the most important data. This guide walks you through several ways to customize backgrounds in Tableau, from individual worksheets to the overall dashboard container.

Why Customize Your Tableau Dashboard Background?

While default settings are functional, a custom background can significantly enhance your dashboard's effectiveness. Thoughtful color choices and design elements aren't just for show, they serve practical purposes that elevate your data storytelling.

• Improve Branding and Consistency: Aligning your dashboard's color scheme with your company's brand guidelines creates a professional and coherent experience. When reports are shared internally or with clients, this consistency reinforces brand identity and builds trust in the data presented.
• Enhance Readability and Focus: The right background color can make your charts and text pop. By creating strong contrast between the background and foreground elements (like bar charts, lines, and KPI text), you make the dashboard easier to read and interpret at a glance. You can also use colored containers to group related metrics and visually segment your dashboard.
• Guide the User's Eye: Strategic use of color directs attention. A dark background with bright, vibrant charts naturally draws the eye towards the most critical data points. Conversely, using a neutral, muted background for most of the dashboard while highlighting a specific chart with a colored container tells your audience, "Look here first."

Method 1: Change the Background of a Single Worksheet

Sometimes you don't need to change the entire dashboard, but just one specific chart or table. Modifying the background at the worksheet level gives you granular control over each visual element.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Navigate to the specific worksheet you want to format.
2. Right-click on any empty space within the view (not on a mark or header). From the context menu that appears, select Format...
3. This will open the Format Pane on the left side of your screen. Click the paint bucket icon, which is the Shading tab.
4. Under the Default section, you will see an option for Worksheet. Click the color dropdown next to it.
5. From here, you can select a standard color, click "More Colors..." to use a custom color picker, or enter a specific hex code to match your brand's palette perfectly.

Pro Tip: In this same Format Pane, you can also adjust the background color for the Pane (the area behind the data marks) and the Header (the area behind your axes and labels) independently. This is useful for creating striped tables or highlighting specific sections of a chart.

Method 2: Change the Entire Dashboard Background Color

For a unified look, an overall background color is often the best approach. When you set the background at the dashboard level, any worksheets that don't have a specific color assigned will inherit this choice, creating a seamless design.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Open the dashboard you wish to customize.
2. On the left side of the screen, ensure the Dashboard pane is selected. Within this pane, you will see two tabs: Dashboard and Layout. Click on the Layout tab.
3. Here you’ll see an "Item hierarchy" tree, which lists every object on your dashboard. At the very top of this tree, click on the item named "Dashboard."
4. Once the overall dashboard is selected, look below the item tree. You'll see formatting options appear, including Border, Padding, and of course, Background.
5. Click the color swatch next to "Background" to open the editor. Select your preferred color and your dashboard's background will update instantly.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

A frequent point of confusion is when a dashboard background color doesn't seem to apply to the worksheets placed on it. This almost always happens because the individual worksheets have their own background color set (typically the default white).

To fix this, go to each worksheet on the dashboard, right-click and select "Format...". In the Format Pane, navigate to the "Shading" (paint bucket) section and set the Worksheet background color to "None." When the worksheet background is "None," it becomes transparent, allowing the underlying dashboard color to show through.

Method 3: Use a Background Image

For more advanced designs, you can move beyond solid colors and use an image as your dashboard background. This could be a subtle pattern, a gradient, or even a branded watermark. When done correctly, this can add a sophisticated touch to your report.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. From your dashboard view, locate the Objects panel in the bottom-left corner.
2. Drag the Image object onto your dashboard canvas. A dialog box will pop up.
3. Click "Choose..." and select the image file from your computer.
4. Select "Fit Image" to ensure the image scales to the size of the container, and "Center Image" if you just want it fixed in the middle. "Fit Image" is usually the best option for backgrounds. Click "OK."
5. Your image has now been added, but it's probably covering some of your charts. To fix this, you need to send it to the back.
6. Select the image on the dashboard. Click the downward-pointing arrow on its container to open the menu, and choose Floating. This lets you move and resize it freely.
7. Resize the floating image to cover the entire dashboard. Then, click the menu arrow again and select Floating Order > Send to Back. This will place it behind all of your other dashboard objects.

A Quick Word of Caution: A busy or high-contrast image can make your charts nearly impossible to read. The best background images are subtle. Think light gray company logos, faint patterns, or simple color gradients that don't compete with your data visualizations for attention.

Method 4: Format Containers and Text Boxes

For more complex layouts, your best tool is the Layout Container. Containers are invisible boxes that hold and arrange your worksheets and objects, and giving them their own background color is a powerful way to organize your dashboard into clear, logical sections.

Formatting Layout Containers

1. Select the horizontal or vertical container you want to format. The easiest way to do this is to open the Layout tab in your Dashboard pane and click on the container's name in the item tree.
2. Just like when formatting the entire dashboard, editing options will appear below the item tree. Find the Background option and choose your color.

Using this technique, you can easily create visually distinct sections - for example, a gray container for all your filters on the left, a light blue container for all your KPIs at the top, and your main charts on a white background below. This guides the user through the information in a structured way.

Final Thoughts

Customizing backgrounds in Tableau is an essential skill for creating polished, professional reports. By formatting the background of individual worksheets, the overall dashboard, containers, and even using images, you can improve readability, reinforce branding, and build a more engaging story with your data.

Of course, mastering all the little formatting quirks of tools like Tableau takes time - time that could be spent analyzing data and finding insights. At Graphed, we remove the learning curve and the manual labor. Instead of navigating menus and format options, you simply tell our AI analyst what you want to see in plain English. Graphed connects directly to your data sources and instantly builds beautiful, live-updating dashboards, so all your effort goes into making great decisions, not design work.