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Power BI Visualisations Overview

Every chart type in Power BI, what it is best for, and when to use which

Power BI has 30+ built-in visual types plus hundreds of custom visuals from AppSource. Knowing which visual to use for which business question is a design skill that separates good dashboards from confusing ones. The most important rule: choose the visual that answers the question, not the one that looks impressive. A simple bar chart that is immediately understood beats a complex custom visual that needs a legend.
Power BI Chart Selection Guide
Choose the chart that answers the business question — not the one that looks impressive
📊Bar / Column
Compare values across categories
e.g. Sales by Region, Product ranking
📈Line / Area
Show trends over time
e.g. Monthly revenue, daily active users
🔢Card / KPI
Single key metric
e.g. Total Sales, # Orders, Avg Order Value
🍩Donut / Pie
Part-of-whole (max 6 slices)
e.g. Category share, channel mix
⚬Scatter
Correlation between two measures
e.g. Price vs Sales volume
⊞Matrix
Crosstab / pivot table
e.g. Sales by Product × Quarter
▪Treemap
Hierarchical composition
e.g. Category → Sub-category share
🗺️Map
Geographic distribution
e.g. Sales by city / state
💡 Rule of thumb: Comparison → Bar | Trend → Line | Composition → Donut | Single metric → Card

Example

Visual type selection guide
COMPARISON (A vs B vs C):
  → Bar / Column chart
  → Grouped or stacked for sub-categories

TREND OVER TIME:
  → Line chart (best for continuous trend)
  → Area chart (emphasise volume)
  → Waterfall (show +/- changes over steps)

PART-OF-WHOLE (share/composition):
  → Donut chart (max 5-6 categories)
  → Treemap (many nested categories)
  → 100% Stacked bar

RELATIONSHIP / CORRELATION:
  → Scatter chart (X vs Y, optional bubble size Z)

SINGLE KEY METRIC (KPI):
  → Card visual (one number prominently)
  → KPI visual (with trend and target)
  → Gauge (against a target range)

GEOGRAPHIC:
  → Map / Filled Map / Azure Map
  → Requires city/country/state column or lat/long

TABULAR DATA:
  → Table (flat, sortable)
  → Matrix (pivot-style with row/column grouping)

FILTERING:
  → Slicer (dropdown, list, button, date range)
💡 Pie charts are controversial — most data visualisation experts recommend bar charts instead for better accuracy.

Key Points

  • ✓Bar chart = best for comparison. Line chart = best for trend. Card = best for KPI.
  • ✓Avoid pie charts with more than 5 slices — use a bar chart instead
  • ✓Scatter charts need at least two numeric measures — do not use with category data
  • ✓Matrix visuals are the Power BI equivalent of Excel pivot tables
  • ✓Custom visuals from AppSource: use sparingly — they can slow down reports

Practice Question

A manager wants to see how sales changed month by month over the last 2 years. Which visual type is most appropriate?