How to Use Donut Chart in Power BI

A donut chart is one of the simplest ways to show how different parts make up a whole, similar to a pie chart, but with space to display key numbers in the center. With Power BI, you can create and customize these charts in just a few clicks. This guide will walk you through how to create a donut chart in Power BI, offer some best practices for making it effective, and show you when you might want to choose a different visual instead.

What is a Donut Chart and When Should You Use One?

A donut chart is essentially a pie chart with a hole in the middle. Like a pie chart, its primary job is to visualize proportions. Each "slice" of the donut represents a category, and the size of the slice corresponds to its percentage of the total. That empty space in the center isn't just for looks, it’s a prime spot to add a key metric, like the total value of all the slices, a KPI banner, or a company logo.

Donut charts are most effective in specific scenarios. You should consider using one when:

• You're displaying parts of a whole. This is their specialty. If your goal is to show how much each sales region contributed to total revenue or what percentage of your website traffic comes from different channels, a donut chart is a solid choice.
• You have a small number of categories. They work best with 2 to 5 categories. Any more than that, and the slices become too thin and cluttered, making the chart difficult to read and compare.
• You want to highlight a key total. The central hole is perfect for placing a Card visual that displays the total sum of the categories, providing immediate context to the viewer. This makes the visual more data-rich and space-efficient.

For example, a donut chart is perfect for showing a breakdown of marketing budget allocation by channel ("Social Media," "PPC," "Content," "Events") but a poor choice for displaying sales figures for 30 different product lines.

When To Avoid Using a Donut Chart

Like any tool, donut charts have their limitations. There are times when a different chart type will tell your data story more effectively. Avoid using a donut chart if:

• You need to compare the values of different categories precisely. Our brains are not very good at judging the size of angles. It's much easier to compare the lengths of bars. If the goal is to see which category performed best or by how much, a simple bar or column chart is almost always the superior choice.
• You have too many categories. As mentioned, once you get past five or six categories, a donut chart becomes unreadable. A cluttered multi-colored visual just creates confusion. For larger datasets, a bar chart or a tree map will serve you better.
• You're showing data over time. To visualize trends or changes across days, weeks, or months, you should use a line chart or a column chart. Donut charts show a static, part-to-whole relationship at a single point in time, not a progression.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Create a Donut Chart in Power BI

Ready to build one? The process is very straightforward. Let's create a donut chart showing sales by product category.

1. Load Your Data into Power BI

First, you need data. For a donut chart, your dataset should have at least two columns: one with categorical data (like "Product Category") and one with numerical data (like "Sales Amount").

Start by opening Power BI Desktop and loading your data. You can do this from the Home ribbon by clicking on Get data and selecting your source (Excel workbook, database, etc.).

2. Select the Donut Chart Visual

With your data loaded, look to the Visualizations pane on the right side of the Power BI interface. Find the Donut chart icon - it looks like a pie chart with a hole - and click on it to add an empty visual placeholder to your report canvas.

3. Add Your Data Fields

Now, you need to tell Power BI what data to show. With the donut chart visual selected, look at the visual configuration fields just below the icons in the Visualizations pane.

Notice a few key data buckets appear, like Legend and Values.

• Legend: This is for your categories. Drag your categorical field here (e.g., "Product Category").
• Values: This is for your numerical data. Drag your numerical field here (e.g., "Sales Amount"). It will automatically be summed up.

Once you drag your fields over, Power BI will instantly render the donut chart. Now, it's ready for formatting.

Customizing Your Donut Chart for Better Clarity

The default chart is great, but a few formatting tweaks can make your visual much easier to understand. To customize your chart, select it and then click the Format your visual icon on the Visualizations pane (it looks like a paintbrush).

Turn On Data Labels and Turn Off Legend

The legend on the side of your report canvas forces the viewer's eyes to look back and forth between the text and the donut chart. It’s far more effective to display the categories directly on the chart with labels.

Turn the Legend to Off and turn the Data Labels to On.

Refine Slice Colors

Brand consistency is important. In the Slices dropdown, you can click on each category and assign a specific hex code or pick from the default palette. Here's a good practice tip to share:

Use neutral colors (like light gray) for less critical data segments, helping the chart to stand out and emphasize important sections.

Adjust Inner Radius

Still within the Layout section dropdown, you'll see an Inner radius option. Adjusting this will allow you to change the size of the center hole in your chart to suit your needs.

Utilize the Center Space

The best feature of a donut chart is its hollow center, which is prime real estate for displaying KPIs or other critical data points.

Final Thoughts

The donut chart is an excellent visual tool in Power BI for visualizing part-whole relationships in your data. By keeping best practices in mind, it can be an effective way to communicate insights and engage your audience.

Building dashboards manually, click-by-click in tools like Power BI can be tedious and require a significant time investment to really master. At Graphed, we’ve created a way for you to build the same reports and dashboards in seconds, not hours. Instead of clicking and dragging fields, you just describe what you want to see - "Show me US traffic vs. Canada Traffic in a Donut chart" - and we instantly create the chart for you, pulling directly from your live data sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, or Facebook Ads. This allows you to go straight from data to insights without getting bogged down in the manual setup.