How to Create a Heat Map in Tableau

A heat map is one of the quickest ways to understand complex data, instantly revealing patterns and concentrations with a simple color scale. In this guide, you’ll learn exactly how to create your own publication-ready heat maps in Tableau, step-by-step. We will cover both the standard grid heat map and the geographical density maps you've likely seen used to show regional trends.

What Exactly is a Heat Map, and Why is it Useful?

At its core, a heat map uses color intensity to represent values. Imagine an Excel sheet filled with sales numbers for different product categories across various states. It's just a wall of numbers. A heat map transforms that wall into a visual story. You can immediately spot the “hot spots” (darker, more intense colors) where sales are high and the “cold spots” (lighter colors) where performance is lagging.

Heat maps are incredibly effective for a few key reasons:

• Visualizing Density: They excel at showing the concentration of data points. For example, a website click map shows which parts of a landing page get the most attention.
• Identifying Patterns Instantly: Our brains are wired to notice color variations. Heat maps let you spot relationships and anomalies far faster than you could by scanning rows of data. Is one region consistently outperforming others? Does a certain product-category combination drive the most revenue?
• Comparing Categories: Arranged in a grid, a heat map makes it easy to compare performance across two different dimensions, like sales by region and product category, or website sessions by day of the week and hour of the day.

They are go-to visuals for marketers analyzing campaign performance, sales managers reviewing regional quotas, and analysts looking for user behavior trends on a website or app.

Before You Start: Prepping Your Data for a Tableau Heat Map

Good data preparation is the foundation of any great visualization. Luckily, the data structure needed for a basic heat map in Tableau is quite simple. To create a standard grid-style heat map, you’ll generally need:

• At least one categorical dimension: These are the labels for your rows and columns. Think of them as the “what” or “where.” Examples include Product Category, Region, Marketing Channel, or Day of the Week.
• At least one numerical measure: This is the value that will determine the color intensity. Think of it as the “how much.” Examples include Sales, Revenue, Number of Users, or Conversion Rate.

For example, if you wanted to see sales performance by category and region, your spreadsheet data might look something like this:

Region, Category, Sales North, Technology, 15000 North, Furniture, 9000 South, Technology, 22000 South, Office Supplies, 7500 West, Furniture, 18000 ...and so on.

For a geographical heat map (also known as a density map), your data will need location information, typically latitude and longitude coordinates. If your data has recognized place names like city, state, or country, Tableau can often generate the coordinates for you.

Step-by-Step Guide: Building a Grid Heat Map in Tableau

Let's create a classic heat map to analyze sales figures across different product sub-categories and regions. This is a common analysis for e-commerce stores and retail businesses.

We'll use Tableau's "Superstore" sample dataset, which is a great playground for learning.

1. Connect to Your Data Source

First, open Tableau and connect to your data. On the start page, select "Microsoft Excel" and locate the "Sample - Superstore" file that comes with your Tableau installation. Once loaded, click on the "Sheet 1" tab at the bottom of the screen to go to your worksheet.

2. Place Your Dimensions on Rows and Columns

On the left-hand side, under the "Data" pane, you’ll see your Dimensions and Measures.

• Find the Region dimension. Click and drag it onto the Columns shelf at the top of the worksheet.
• Next, find the Sub-Category dimension. Click and drag it onto the Rows shelf.

You should now have a table structure with region names across the top and a list of product sub-categories down the side.

3. Choose the "Square" Mark Type

Tableau defaults to showing text data (an "ABC" in each cell), which isn't what we want. Look for the Marks card on the left side of your worksheet. There's a dropdown menu that probably says "Automatic."

Click on this dropdown and select Square. Your table will be replaced by a grid of empty blue squares - the basic shape of our heat map.

4. Bring Your Data to Life with Color

Now it's time to add our measure to make the visualization meaningful. We want the color of each square to represent the total sales for that specific region and sub-category.

Find the Sales measure in the Data pane. Click and drag it directly onto the Color button on the Marks card. Instantly, your grid will light up. Tableau automatically creates a color gradient, assigning darker colors to higher sales values and lighter colors to lower ones.

Congratulations, you've just created a basic heat map! You can immediately see that "Phones" in the "West" region is a top performer, while "Fasteners" in the "South" is not.

5. Refine and Customize Your Heat Map

A good visualization is clear and easy to read. Let's make some simple adjustments.

• Customize Colors: The default blue might not be ideal. Click on the Color button on the Marks card, then select "Edit Colors..." This allows you to choose from dozens of color palettes. An "Orange-Blue Diverging" palette can be great for showing positive and negative values, while a single-color sequential palette (like a light green to dark green) is perfect for showing a range from low to high.
• Add Labels: What if you want to see the actual sales numbers in each box? Drag the Sales measure again, but this time, drop it onto the Label button on the Marks card. The numbers will appear inside each square. You can click the Label button to format the text - changing the font, size, or color - to improve readability.
• Adjust the Fit: To make the heat map fill your viewing area, go to the toolbar at the top and change the dropdown menu from "Standard" to Entire View. This will resize the squares to fill the window.

Alternative: Creating a Geographic Heat Map (Density Map)

What if you want to see the concentration of customers in a city instead of a grid? This is where Tableau's density map feature shines. It plots individual data points as overlapping marks whose color builds in intensity where points are clustered together.

1. Get Geographic Data on the Map

First, you need fields that Tableau recognizes as geographic data (like State, City, or Zip Code, which will have a small globe icon next to them). If you only have latitude and longitude, that works even better.

• Drag the Longitude field to the Columns shelf.
• Drag the Latitude field to the Rows shelf.

This creates a world map in your worksheet. You will probably just see a single point on the map for now. To show all your data points, drag a field that provides detail, such as Order ID or Customer Name, onto the Detail button on the Marks card. Now you'll see a scatter plot of all your orders on the map.

2. Change the Mark Type to "Density"

Just like before, go to the Marks card. Click the dropdown menu and select Density instead of Square. The map instantly transforms. Tableau calculates where your data points are most concentrated and applies a heat map-style color overlay.

3. Adjust the Density and Colors

You have full control over how the density heat map looks. Click the Color button on the Marks card. You can change:

• Color Palette: Choose a palette that fits your story. Density maps often use "Temperature" or "Traffic Light" palettes that go from cool to hot colors.
• Intensity: This slider controls how "hot" the hot spots get. Increasing the intensity makes the high-concentration areas glow brighter.
• Opacity: You can make the heat map more or less transparent to better see the underlying map details.

Geographic heat maps are perfect for identifying areas with high customer concentration, popular delivery zones, or clusters of service calls.

Final Thoughts

As you've seen, building a powerful heat map in Tableau is a straightforward process, whether you're creating a simple grid to compare categories or a geographical map to visualize density. By dragging your dimensions and measures into place and customizing the colors and labels, you can quickly turn raw data into a compelling visual that tells a clear story.

Of course, this process requires learning a tool's interface and manually configuring each chart. A tool like Tableau is incredibly powerful, but there's a learning curve. For teams that need answers fast, we built Graphed to automate much of this work. After connecting your Shopify, Google Analytics, or Salesforce data in a few clicks, you can ask for a visualization in plain English - like "create a heat map of sales by region and product category" - and get a live-updating dashboard in seconds, skipping the manual setup entirely.