Continuing with the posts on maps in Looker Studio, let’s look at another one offered by Google Maps: the filled map.
For the examples, I’ll keep using the H&M store data.
Visit the post on how to add charts to your report in Looker Studio, if you need a refresher.
1. The Filled Map
A filled map displays geographical points by colouring their areas.

The meaning of this colour can vary depending on the set-up:
Colour Dimension
If you select a dimension within the Colour dimension setting, the colour will represent the chosen dimension. As with Tooltip in bubble maps, the relationship between the colour dimension and the geographical dimension must be one-to-one. For instance, Store type wouldn’t work for Country since there are multiple store types per country, but Continent would work.
Colour Metric
If you choose a metric within the Colour metric setting, the colours will represent the value of that metric in each geographical area. You can select different colours or shades for maximum, middle, and minimum values.
Remember, you can add any visualisation in two ways:
From the top menu, go to Insert and select the chart you want.
In the second top menu, click Add a chart and choose the one that interests you.
2. Example
To create the maps described above, where colour can represent two different things, first add a filled map. Then, in its Set-up do the following:
- Select Country as Location
- and Weekend total opening hours as Colour metric
Next, change the aggregation so that it shows the average opening hours per store in each city, rather than the total. As explained in the previous post on modifying metrics data types, click SUM to the left of the metric in Set-up, and under Aggregation, choose Average.

In the Style section, we’ll choose different shades of green for the maximum, middle, and minimum values.

Here’s an example of a filled map where values are represented in shades of green.

Have you tried using City as the location? Since this type of map colours the entire area of a location, and cities typically have small areas, it’s not ideal for visualising low-level geographical points—unless you zoom into a smaller area.

As with previous cases, if you select a colour dimension, the option to add a colour metric disappears, and vice versa. If you remove the colour metric, you can choose Continent as the colour dimension, resulting in a map where each country with H&M stores is coloured according to the continent it belongs to.

In this filled map, the country is set as the location and the continent as the colour dimension.

What do you think of this type of map? Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions 🙂