---
name: home-assistant-dashboard-conventions
description: "Home Assistant dashboard styling rules: card types, navigation, and layout conventions for the familie-schoen.com homelab."
version: 1.0.0
tags: [home-assistant, dashboard, ui, mushroom, smart-home]
---

# Home Assistant Dashboard Conventions

## Card Types

| Allowed ✅ | Forbidden 🚫 |
|------------|--------------|
| Mushroom cards | Bubble Cards (revoked/abandoned) |
| Native HA cards | Custom cards that require unsupported HACS integrations |

**Rationale:** Bubble Cards were revoked by the developer. Mushroom cards are actively maintained and cover all use cases (sensor, light, climate, media, chip).

## Navigation

- Use **view tabs** for navigation (native HA feature)
- Do NOT use custom navigation overlays or popup cards
- One dashboard per area/floor, linked via view tabs

## Layout

- Grid layout with responsive breakpoints
- Maximum 4 columns on desktop, 1 on mobile
- Group sensors by room/area, not by type
- Use Mushroom chips for quick-status badges at the top of each view

## Color Scheme

- Follow Mushroom default color scheme (adaptive)
- Do NOT override entity icon colors manually unless semantically necessary (e.g. red for alert states)

## Pitfalls

- **Bubble Cards break on HA updates.** They were deprecated and removed — do not re-add them even if old configs reference them.
- **Mushroom requires HACS.** Ensure HACS is installed before using Mushroom cards. If HACS breaks, dashboards degrade to native cards gracefully.
- **View tab YAML vs UI.** Prefer UI-configured views over YAML dashboards for maintainability. Use YAML only for complex templated views.
