I love a smart home dashboard that actually reflects the real state of my house, and in this video I walk you through how I built a clean, custom 3D-style floorplan using Sweet Home 3D and Home Assistant. This is the more advanced route (it gets involved), but the payoff is huge: you end up with a floorplan where lights and other devices visually “turn on” in the exact room they’re in, and you can control them with a tap. I start in Sweet Home 3D by drawing walls (exact dimensions are nice, but rough is totally fine), adding furniture, and—most importantly—adding ceiling lights so the “on” images look realistic. From there, I show my workflow for rendering a base image (1920x1080, best quality) and then rendering an image for every single light, one at a time, at a consistent brightness (I use 50% so it’s bright but not harsh). I also explain why saving a consistent point of view matters, and how I handle details like a garage door “open” look by using a door frame to create an opening. Then we jump into Home Assistant: upload images to the www folder, create a blank dashboard, paste my YAML, and use a picture-elements card with image entities plus invisible state icons (opacity 0) so you can tap to toggle. It’s a lot of work, but it’s genuinely fun and super rewarding once it’s live.