How to Change Background of Power BI Dashboard

A well-designed dashboard background can transform your Power BI report from a simple collection of charts into a polished, professional, and on-brand analytical tool. This article walks you through everything you need to know about customizing the background of your reports and dashboards, from simple color changes to advanced design layouts.

Good Design Matters: Why Bother Changing Your Background?

Before diving into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." The default white background in Power BI is clean and functional, but customizing it offers several key advantages:

• Improved Branding: Incorporating your company's colors, logos, or design elements creates a consistent and professional look that aligns with other business materials.
• Better User Experience (UX): A thoughtfully chosen background, especially a dark theme, can reduce eye strain for users who spend long hours analyzing data.
• Enhanced Readability: The right background contrast can make your charts, text, and KPIs pop, drawing attention to the most important insights and making the data easier to interpret at a glance.
• Structured Layouts: You can create a background image with designated zones or color blocks, helping you structure a cleaner, more organized layout for your visuals.

The Most Common Point of Confusion: Reports vs. Dashboards

In the Power BI universe, the terms "report" and "dashboard" are often used interchangeably, but they are fundamentally different components with distinct customization options. This is a critical distinction for changing backgrounds.

• A Power BI Report is the multi-page, interactive deep-dive canvas where you build your individual visualizations (charts, tables, cards). This is where the primary background customization happens. You have full control over the page background color and image.
• A Power BI Dashboard is a single-page overview, often called a "lobby," that displays a consolidated view of key metrics. Visuals are "pinned" from one or more reports to the dashboard. Direct background customization on dashboards is much more limited. The "background" is effectively the combination of the dashboard theme and the tiles you pin to it.

The key takeaway is this: To create a dashboard with a beautiful, custom background, you must first design it in the report and then pin it to the dashboard correctly. Let's start with the report.

Step-by-Step Guide: Changing a Background in a Power BI Report

This is where the magic happens. All your detailed background work is done on the report page level within Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service.

1. Select the Report Canvas

First, make sure no visuals are selected on your report page. The easiest way to do this is to simply click on the empty white space on your report's canvas. When you've done this correctly, the Format pane (the paintbrush icon) on the right will display options for formatting the entire page, rather than a specific visual.

2. Navigate to the Format Pane

With the canvas selected, click the paintbrush icon to open the Format page pane. Here, you will see several options for customizing the page. We are interested in two of them: Canvas background and Wallpaper.

• Canvas background: This is the background for the report page itself - the area where your visuals sit. This is what you'll want to change in most cases.
• Wallpaper: This applies a color or image to the area outside of your report canvas. It's only visible if your canvas isn't set to 100% width or is transparent. For most standard reports, focusing on the Canvas background is sufficient.

3. Customizing the Canvas Background

Expand the Canvas background section. Here you'll find three main controls: Color, Image, and Transparency.

Option A: Changing the Background Color

Changing the color is the quickest way to update your report's look. Click the color swatch next to "Color." A color palette will appear.

• You can choose one of the predefined theme colors.
• You can select "More colors..." to open a color picker and find the exact hue you need.
• If you have a specific brand color, you can paste the hex code (e.g., #0A2342) directly into the hex code field for perfect consistency.

After selecting your color, you'll notice nothing has changed yet! This is because, by default, the background transparency is set to 100%. Lower the Transparency slider to 0% (or your desired level) to make your new background color fully visible.

Option B: Adding a Background Image

For more advanced designs, you can use an image as your background. Under the Canvas background dropdown, click the Add Image button. A file explorer window will open, allowing you to browse for a JPEG, PNG, or other image files on your computer.

Once you've selected an image, you have two important settings to configure:

• Image Fit: This controls how your image is displayed on the canvas.
• Transparency: Just like with color, you must reduce the transparency slider from 100% to 0% to see your image. You can also set a partial transparency if you want to subtly blend the image behind your visuals without it being distracting.

Advanced Technique: Designing a Structural Background

One of the most powerful ways to use a background image is to create a custom layout that guides the placement of your visuals. This gives your reports a highly polished, app-like feel.

1. Design in an External Tool: Use a tool like Canva, Figma, or even PowerPoint. Create a new design with a 16:9 aspect ratio (the default for Power BI, e.g., 1280x720 pixels or 1920x1080 pixels).
2. Create Your Layout: Add shapes, shaded boxes, side panels, headers, or footers where you plan to place your KPIs, charts, and slicers. This acts as a visual template. Maybe you want a dark grey sidebar on the left for filters and a light grey main area for content. Add your logo for branding.
3. Save as an Image: Export your final design as a high-quality PNG or JPEG file.
4. Upload to Power BI: Follow the steps above to add this image to your Canvas background, setting the Image Fit to Fill and Transparency to 0%.
5. Align Your Visuals: Now, drag and drop your Power BI visuals onto the structured areas you designed. Turn off the individual backgrounds on your visuals (in the Format pane under Effects > Background) so they appear seamlessly integrated with your new design.

Getting Your Custom Background Onto a Dashboard

Now that your report page is designed, how do you get this look onto a dashboard? You can't just pin individual visuals because they will just show up as plain tiles. Instead, you need to pin the entire live page.

1. Save and publish your report from Power BI Desktop to the Power BI Service.
2. Open the report in the Power BI Service.
3. Navigate to the report page with the custom background you created.
4. On the top menu bar, click the three-dot menu (...) and select Pin to a dashboard. (Or find the pin icon on newer UI updates).
5. You'll be prompted to pin it to an existing dashboard or a new one. Choose "New Dashboard" and give it a name.
6. Then click Pin live.

When you go to your new dashboard, you'll see your entire report page - custom background and all - as one large, interactive tile. This is the modern and most effective way to create visually stunning dashboards in Power BI.

Best Practices for Effective Background Design

A great background supports the data - it doesn't compete with it. Keep these tips in mind:

• Prioritize Contrast and Readability: If you use a dark background, ensure your fonts and data colors are light (e.g., white or light grey) and vice-versa. The goal is to make the data effortless to read.
• Keep It Simple: Avoid overly "busy" or intricate patterns. Textured or subtly graded images work best. A cluttered background distracts from the insights you're trying to convey.
• Use Branding Subtly: Incorporating brand colors is great, but don't overwhelm the dashboard. Use them for accents in titles or on key visuals rather than making the entire canvas a bright brand color that is hard to look at.
• Consider Accessibility: Power BI includes built-in themes for color-blind users. When choosing your own colors, consider using tools that check for color contrast to ensure your report is accessible to all stakeholders.

Final Thoughts

Customizing the background of your Power BI canvas is a straightforward way to dramatically improve the look, feel, and usability of your reports. By understanding how to work within the report designer and pin live pages, you can move beyond default settings and create dashboards that are both data-rich and beautifully designed.

While mastering tools like Power BI is a valuable skill, we know the learning curve can be steep and the process is often manual. Creating dashboards, let alone designing them, can consume hours you just don't have. At Graphed, we handle all of that for you. Simply connect your marketing and sales data sources in just a few clicks, then describe the dashboard you want in plain English. We instantly create professional, real-time dashboards so you can get back to analyzing insights instead of wrestling with format panes and design settings.