After two years of tweaking my Home Assistant setup at eBay (and way too many late-night dashboard redesigns), I’ve learned that a great Lovelace dashboard isn’t just about pretty cards—it’s about making your smart home actually usable.
Your dashboard is the face of your smart home. It’s what you’ll stare at when checking if you left the garage door open, what guests will see when you show off your setup, and what determines whether you’ll actually use Home Assistant or just go back to flipping light switches like a caveman.
I’ve built dozens of dashboard layouts, from minimalist single-page designs to complex multi-tab command centers. Some were gorgeous but useless. Others were functional but ugly as sin. Here’s what I’ve learned about creating dashboards that are both beautiful and practical.
The Foundation: Planning Your Dashboard Layout
Before you start dragging cards around, you need a plan. I learned this the hard way after rebuilding my dashboard six times in the first month.
Start with Your Daily Workflow
Think about what you actually do with your smart home. For me, it’s checking the front door camera before letting the dogs out, adjusting the thermostat when Shelby’s working from home, and making sure all the lights are off before bed.
Your most-used controls should be front and center. Everything else can live on secondary tabs or further down the page. Don’t fall into the trap of putting every single entity on your main dashboard—that’s how you end up with unusable card soup.
Choose Your Device Strategy
Are you primarily using this on your phone, a wall-mounted tablet, or your computer? This completely changes your design approach.
I use a Fire HD 10 tablet mounted in the kitchen, and it’s been perfect for quick glances while cooking. The larger screen lets me use bigger cards with more information density.
Essential Card Types Every Dashboard Needs
After experimenting with every custom card on HACS, here are the ones that actually improve the experience:
Weather Card (But Make It Useful)
The default weather card shows way too much information. I use the weather-card custom component to show just today’s high/low and tomorrow’s forecast. That’s it. I don’t need to know the UV index at 2 AM.
Here’s my weather setup that actually gets used:
type: weather-forecast
entity: weather.home
show_forecast: true
forecast_type: daily
num_forecasts: 3Security Status at a Glance
I run Frigate NVR with a Coral TPU for object detection, and having quick camera access on the dashboard is crucial. The picture-glance card works perfectly for this—it shows the latest camera snapshot and lets you tap to view the live feed.
Pro tip: Create a conditional card that only shows motion alerts when someone’s detected. Way more useful than a static camera view.
Quick Controls That Actually Save Time
Forget toggle switches for everything. Use the button card for scenes and scripts instead. I have one button that runs my “leaving house” scene—locks doors, arms security, adjusts thermostat, and turns off all lights. That’s infinitely more useful than 20 individual switches.
Real Dashboard Examples That Work
Let me walk through three dashboard approaches I’ve actually used and lived with:
The Minimalist Mobile Dashboard
For phone use, less is definitely more. My mobile dashboard has just five cards:
- Current weather with tomorrow’s forecast
- Security cameras (conditional—only shows when motion detected)
- Quick scene buttons (Home, Away, Sleep, Movie)
- Climate control (just thermostat, not every temperature sensor)
- Critical alerts (battery low, doors unlocked, etc.)
That’s it. Everything else lives on separate tabs that I access maybe once a week. This approach actually makes me use the dashboard instead of just opening specific device apps.
The Kitchen Command Center
My wall-mounted tablet dashboard is way more information-dense. Since it’s always visible, I can include stuff that would clutter a phone interface:
The top row shows current time, weather, and whether anyone’s home (using the Everything Presence Lite sensors I have in each room). The middle section has lighting controls organized by room, and the bottom shows our Mercedes E450 and Ford F450 locations if they’re away from home.
Here’s what makes this work: I used custom button cards with room icons and organized everything by physical location, not device type. When you’re standing in the kitchen, you want to control kitchen lights, not scroll through a list of every bulb in the house.
The Engineer’s Power User Setup
For my laptop, I went full nerd with multiple tabs and detailed monitoring. This is where I check system health, review automation histories, and debug issues.
Tab 1 is the standard overview. Tab 2 is energy monitoring (using a Shelly EM for whole-house tracking). Tab 3 is system status—Raspberry Pi temperatures, disk usage, automation execution times.
Most people don’t need this level of detail, but as an engineer, I love having performance data available when something acts weird.
Custom Cards Worth Installing
The HACS community has created some genuinely useful custom cards. Here are my must-haves:
Button Card
This one’s essential. The default button entity is ugly and limited. The custom button card lets you create beautiful buttons with icons, colors, and multi-action taps. I use these for all my scene controls.
Mini Graph Card
Perfect for showing temperature trends, energy usage over time, or any sensor data where the trend matters more than the current value. Way more compact than the default history graphs.
Layout Card
This one’s a game-changer for mobile layouts. It automatically adjusts card sizes and positions based on screen width. No more cards getting cut off on different devices.
Auto-Entities
Automatically populates cards based on rules. I use this for battery status cards that only show devices below 20% charge. Saves tons of manual maintenance when you add new devices.
Color Schemes and Visual Design
Here’s where people usually go wrong: they pick colors based on what looks cool in screenshots, not what’s actually usable day-to-day.
Dark vs Light Themes
I run dark theme exclusively. Not for aesthetics, but because my wall tablet is visible from the living room, and bright screens are annoying when watching TV. Dark themes also save battery on OLED displays.
The built-in dark theme works fine, but if you want something more polished, the “Slate” theme from HACS looks professional without being flashy.
Icon Strategy
Use icons consistently. All lights should use the same icon family, all sensors should match, etc. I stick with Material Design Icons since they’re already integrated and cover everything I need.
Don’t go overboard with custom icons unless you’re willing to maintain them when devices change or you add new ones.
Dashboard Organization Tips
After living with various layouts, here’s what actually matters:
Group by Function, Not Device Type
Instead of “All Lights” and “All Sensors” sections, group by room or purpose. “Living Room,” “Security,” “Climate” makes way more sense when you’re trying to accomplish something specific.
Use Conditional Cards Strategically
Show information only when it matters. I have a card that displays weather alerts only when they’re active, and another that shows vacuum status only when it’s running. This keeps the dashboard clean most of the time but surfaces important info when needed.
Mobile-First Design
Even if you have a wall tablet, design for mobile first. You’ll access your dashboard from your phone way more often than you think, especially when troubleshooting or showing off to friends.
Performance and Loading Speed
A beautiful dashboard that takes 10 seconds to load is a useless dashboard. Here’s how to keep things snappy:
Limit Entity Count
Every entity on your dashboard requires a connection to Home Assistant. More entities = slower loading, especially on mobile networks. Keep your main dashboard under 50 entities if possible.
Optimize Media
If you’re using background images or custom icons, compress them. A 5MB background image will kill your loading times, especially on slower connections.
Use Lazy Loading
Put rarely-used cards on separate tabs or views. Home Assistant only loads what’s visible, so this actually improves performance.
Common Mistakes I Made (So You Don’t Have To)
Let me save you some pain by sharing my biggest dashboard fails:
The Everything Dashboard
My first dashboard tried to show every entity I had. It was unusable. Nobody needs to see the battery level of every Zigbee device on their main screen. Create focused dashboards for specific purposes instead.
The Instagram Model
I spent way too much time making my dashboard “look cool” instead of being functional. Pretty screenshots don’t matter if you hate using the thing every day. Function first, form second.
The Custom Card Addiction
Installing every custom card from HACS is tempting, but it becomes a maintenance nightmare. Stick to cards that solve specific problems, not just ones that look different.
Getting Started: Your First Dashboard
If you’re starting from scratch, here’s my recommended approach:
- Start simple: Use only default cards for the first week
- Live with it: Note what you actually use vs what you thought you’d need
- Add one custom card: Start with button-card for better scene controls
- Iterate weekly: Make small changes based on actual usage, not hypothetical needs
Don’t try to build the perfect dashboard on day one. I’m still tweaking mine after two years, and that’s normal.
Hardware for Wall-Mounted Dashboards
If you’re considering a wall-mounted display, here’s what actually works:
The Fire HD 10 is my go-to recommendation. It’s cheap enough that you won’t cry if it breaks, big enough to be useful, and runs the Home Assistant app perfectly with Fully Kiosk Browser.
For mounting, I use a simple tablet wall mount in the kitchen. Keep it at eye level and make sure it’s not in direct sunlight—learned that one the hard way when the screen became impossible to read during dinner time.
Advanced Tips for Power Users
Once you’ve mastered the basics, here are some advanced techniques I use:
Dashboard Variables
Use input_select helpers to create dashboard “modes.” I have a guest mode that hides personal information and a vacation mode that shows different cards entirely. Changes the whole dashboard personality with one dropdown.
Conditional Styling
Use the card-mod custom component to change card appearance based on states. My climate card turns red when the HVAC is working hard, and green when it’s maintaining temperature efficiently.
Time-Based Views
Different information matters at different times. I have automations that adjust which cards are visible—energy monitoring during peak hours, security cameras at night, weather details in the morning.
Maintenance and Updates
Dashboards aren’t set-and-forget. Here’s how I keep mine current:
Monthly review: Check which cards you actually used. Remove the ones gathering digital dust.
Seasonal adjustments: Weather matters more in winter, pool controls matter in summer. Adjust accordingly.
Device updates: When you add new smart devices, think about whether they deserve dashboard space. Most don’t.
Conclusion: Build for Your Life, Not the Internet
The best Home Assistant dashboard is the one you actually use. Not the one that gets upvotes on Reddit, not the one that looks impressive in screenshots, but the one that makes your daily routine smoother.
Start simple, focus on function, and add complexity only when it solves real problems. Your dashboard should feel like a natural extension of your home, not a tech demo.
After two years and countless iterations, my current dashboard isn’t the prettiest one I’ve built. But it’s the one I reach for every morning to check if the garage door closed, every evening to set movie mode, and every night to make sure everything’s secure.
That’s what a great dashboard does—it disappears into your routine until you can’t imagine living without it.
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