What is Tiled and Floating in Tableau?

Building a great Tableau dashboard is part art, part science. You can have the most insightful data in the world, but if your dashboard is poorly organized, your audience will miss the message. This is where Tableau's layout options, Tiled and Floating, come into play - they are the fundamental building blocks that control how every single object on your canvas is positioned and arranged. Understanding the difference is the first step toward creating dashboards that are both functional and visually appealing.

In this tutorial, we’ll break down what tiled and floating layouts are, explore the pros and cons of each, and show you when and how to use them together to build professional dashboards.

What Are Dashboard Layouts in Tableau?

Every element you add to a Tableau dashboard - worksheets, text boxes, images, filters, legends - is an object. Tableau uses layout containers to decide where these objects go and how they interact with each other. The two primary types of layout containers are Tiled and Floating.

Think of it like this:

• Tiled: Imagine you are building with LEGOs on a baseplate. Each brick you add snaps neatly into place next to the others. You can't put one brick halfway on top of another, they exist together in a rigid, organized grid.
• Floating: Imagine you are placing stickers on a piece of paper. You can put a sticker anywhere you want - on top of another sticker, in a corner, or right in the middle. You have complete freedom over the position and layering.

By default, Tableau uses a Tiled layout, but you have the flexibility to switch between or even combine both methods to achieve your desired design.

A Closer Look at Tiled Layouts

When you use a tiled layout, objects are arranged in a single-layer grid that doesn't allow for overlap. When you drag a new object onto the dashboard, Tableau automatically makes space for it by resizing the existing objects. This creates an orderly, structured dashboard where everything fits together perfectly.

Three Great Reasons to Use a Tiled Layout

Tiled is the default setting for a reason - it’s practical, efficient, and great for a wide range of use cases.

1. Structure and Simplicity: Tiled layouts are ideal for beginners or anyone who needs to build a dashboard quickly. You don’t have to waste time manually aligning every object, Tableau’s grid system handles a lot of the organizational work for you. Just drag, drop, and let Tableau organize the space.
2. Automatic and Responsive Resizing: This is the biggest advantage of a tiled layout. When the dashboard size changes (for example, when a viewer opens it on a different monitor), tiled objects automatically resize to fit the new dimensions. This built-in responsiveness is essential for creating dashboards that will be viewed across various devices with different screen resolutions.
3. Keeps Things Clean: The grid structure prevents your dashboard from becoming a cluttered mess. Since objects can't overlap, your design stays clean, organized, and easy for your audience to follow.

Potential Downsides of a Tiled Layout

• Limited Creative Freedom: The structured grid that keeps things organized also restricts your creativity. You can’t place an object in any arbitrary position or layer a KPI card on top of a chart, which can limit complex or custom designs.
• Space Can Get Tight: As you add more objects to a tiled layout, Tableau will continue squeezing them in by making everything smaller. A dashboard with too many tiled elements can quickly feel cramped and difficult to read.

A Closer Look at Floating Layouts

A floating layout gives you total freedom. When you add a floating object to a dashboard, you can place it anywhere on the canvas using specific size and position coordinates. Floating objects are independent of each other and can be layered on top of each other.

Why You Might Choose a Floating Layout

Floating layouts unlock a new level of design customization that tiled layouts can’t match.

1. Pixel-Perfect Creative Control: This is the number one reason to use floating layouts. You can place objects with pinpoint accuracy. This is essential for highly branded dashboards, infographics, or any design where precise alignment and visual appeal are critical.
2. Complete Freedom to Layer Objects: With floating, you can stack elements. For example, you can float a transparent worksheet over a background image, place a title or a KPI summary directly on top of a chart, or even layer charts on top of each other. This allows for rich, dynamic storytelling that guides the viewer's eye.
3. Efficient Use of Space: Sometimes, floating allows you to make better use of your dashboard's real estate. You can neatly tuck away legends, filters, or text boxes over "empty" parts of another chart instead of having them take up their own dedicated space in a tiled grid.

Potential Challenges with a Floating Layout

• It's Not Natively Responsive: This is crucial to remember. Floating objects have a fixed size and position. If the dashboard is viewed on a screen with different dimensions, your carefully crafted design can fall apart - objects may overlap incorrectly, get cut off, or look misaligned. While you can create responsive designs with floating containers, it requires more advanced techniques and careful planning.
• More Manual Effort: With complete freedom comes more responsibility. Aligning and resizing a dozen floating objects can be tedious and time-consuming. You’ll need a careful eye to ensure everything lines up properly.

How to Switch Between Tiled and Floating

Tableau makes it easy to add objects as either tiled or floating and to convert existing objects from one to the other.

Adding New Objects

• The Radio Buttons: In the Dashboard pane on the left, under the Objects section, you’ll see two options: Tiled and Floating. Simply select the one you want before dragging a new object onto your canvas.
• The Shift Key Shortcut: A handy trick is to hold down the Shift key while you are dragging a new object to the canvas. This will temporarily switch its behavior - if your default is tiled, holding shift will make it float, and vice versa.

Changing an Existing Object

If you have an object on your dashboard and want to change its layout type:

1. Click to select the object on the canvas.
2. A grey border will appear around it. Click the small dropdown arrow in the top corner of the object.
3. In the menu that appears, simply select Floating or uncheck it to go back to tiled. The object will immediately switch.

The Pro Approach: Get the Best of Both Worlds with a Hybrid Layout

You don't have to choose permanently between tiled and floating. In fact, most experienced Tableau developers use a hybrid approach to combine the structure of tiled layouts with the flexibility of a floating one.

Here’s the most common and effective strategy:

1. Build the Foundation with Tiled Containers: Start by building the main structure of your dashboard using tiled containers. Arrange your primary visualizations and worksheets in a clean grid. This ensures your core dashboard is organized and has some level of responsiveness.
2. Add Polish with Floating Elements: Once your main structure is in place, switch to a floating layout to add your finishing touches. Float your main dashboard title over the top, place a company logo in the corner, or add text boxes with key insights or callouts directly on top of relevant charts. This allows you to achieve a custom, professional look without sacrificing the underlying structure.

By using a hybrid model, you get the automatic resizing and easy organization from the tiled base, plus the pixel-perfect control for stylistic elements like titles, filters, and annotations.

Final Thoughts

Mastering layouts in Tableau is all about knowing which tool to use for the job. Tiled layouts give you a framework for building functional, organized, and responsive dashboards with minimal effort. Floating layouts empower you to break free from the grid, giving you the creative control needed for polished, pixel-perfect designs. By learning to combine them, you unlock the ability to quickly build dashboards that are as effective as they are beautiful.

As you get deeper into dashboarding, you'll learn that a lot of your time goes into tweaking designs, managing containers, and lining up elements. At Graphed, we’ve simplified this entire process. Instead of dragging, dropping, and configuring layouts manually, you can instantly generate a complete, professional dashboard just by describing what you need. By connecting your data and asking questions in plain English, we handle the layout, design, and analysis so you can focus entirely on understanding your data, not just displaying it.