Chapter 3

Floors and areas

Map the floors and rooms in your home before you assign devices. With that structure in place, dashboards, automations, and voice assistants can understand requests such as “turn on the first-floor living-room lights.”

Why map your home?

Home Assistant uses a hierarchy to represent the physical spaces in your home:

  • Floor: First floor, second floor, basement, or top floor.
  • Area: Living room, primary bedroom, kitchen, or garage.
  • Device/entity: A specific light, switch, or sensor assigned to an area.

Once you create floors and areas, Home Assistant can use that structure in several ways:

  • Voice: “Hey Google, turn off all the lights on the first floor.” Home Assistant knows which lights belong there.
  • Dashboard: Generate views organized by area.
  • Automation: Use a condition such as motion detected in the primary bedroom.

Remember these four levels:

  • Floor: Contains areas, not devices directly. Examples: 1st floor and 2nd floor.
  • Area: Represents a room or space and can belong to a floor. Examples: living room and primary bedroom.
  • Device: Can belong to one area. Example: a Xiaomi light bulb.
  • Entity: Represents one function or data point exposed by a device. It inherits the device area by default, but you can override it. Example: light.living_room_main.

A device or entity can belong to only one area, and an area can belong to only one floor.

Review your current setup

Open Settings → Areas, labels & zones and check what is already there. You will probably find one of these situations:

  1. Nothing yet: For a new installation, follow this chapter from the beginning.
  2. Areas but no floors: An older Home Assistant setup may predate floors. Add floors, then organize the existing areas.
  3. A confusing mixture: If you experimented earlier, decide whether reorganizing or deleting and rebuilding will be clearer.
Version note: Manage floors and areas under Settings → Areas, labels & zones. Before 2024.4, Home Assistant did not support floors and labels, so the page listed only areas. Assign devices through Settings → Devices & services → Devices. Since 2026.2, the default dashboard is named Home; earlier versions call it Overview.
Areas, labels and zones page showing floors and areas
Figure 3-1 The Areas, labels & zones page shows floors on the left and their areas on the right.

Plan the structure first

Spend 5 minutes listing the spaces on paper or in your head:

  • How many floors do you have? Will you include the basement?
  • Which spaces on each floor will you mention in voice commands or automations?
  • Should the balcony, entryway, and hallway each be a separate area?
Naming guidance: Use the names you say every day. If you say “turn on the primary-bedroom light,” name the area “Primary Bedroom,” not “Bedroom_M.”
Warning: Avoid abbreviations such as LR, codes such as Zone_A, and vague plurals such as Bedrooms. They become hard to recognize later.

Create floors and areas

  1. Create a floor

    Select Create floor in the upper-right corner. Enter “First Floor,” open the icon picker, and search for floor to find a suitable icon. Save it, then repeat for “Second Floor,” “Basement,” and any other floors.

    Create floor dialog
    Figure 3-2 The floor dialog includes a name, icon, and floor level.

  2. Set the floor level

    The floor level controls sorting. For example, use -1 for the basement, 1 for the first floor, 2 for the second floor, and 10 for the top floor. Dashboards and cards can then display floors in that order.

  3. Create an area

    Select Create area under a floor. Enter “Living Room,” choose an icon such as mdi:sofa, and save the area.

    Create area dialog
    Figure 3-3 The area dialog includes a name, icon, and floor.

  4. Use this sample area list

    First floor: Entryway, living room, dining room, kitchen, guest bathroom, and back balcony.

    Second floor: Primary bedroom, primary bathroom, child’s room, office, and hallway.

    Outdoors: Yard, garage, and front gate.

    Tip: You can leave an outdoor area without a floor, or create an “Outdoors” floor to group outdoor spaces.
Verify: Return to Settings → Areas, labels & zones. Your new floors and areas should appear in the filters on the left. Select an area and confirm that its device count appears on the right.

Assign devices to areas

The structure is useful only after you place devices in it:

  1. Open the device list

    Go to Settings → Devices & services → Devices to see all paired devices.

    Device list with area assignments
    Figure 3-4 The device list shows each assigned area. Unassigned devices have a blank area.

  2. Edit a device and choose its area

    Select a device, select the pencil in the upper-right corner, and choose an area from the list. Save the change.

    Area selection for a device
    Figure 3-5 Assign a device to an area.

  3. Assign several devices together

    Use Batch selection in the upper-right corner of the device list. Select several devices, then choose Move to area. This saves time after you install a roomful of lights.

Next step: Chapter 4 shows how to replace an ID such as switch.0x00abc123 with a recognizable name and use labels to group items across areas.

Verify the finished setup

Return to Settings → Areas, labels & zones and compare your result with this example:

Completed floor and area layout
Figure 3-6 The completed layout shows “N devices” under each area.

Next, open Home in the sidebar, called Overview in earlier versions. Switch to the view organized by area and confirm that Home Assistant has generated a card for each area.

FAQ

Can I rename a floor or area later?
Yes. Renaming does not disconnect devices or break automations that use the internal ID. The display name changes everywhere in Home Assistant.
Can a device belong to two areas at once?
No. A device can belong to only one area. For a light in an open-plan living and dining space, choose the area that best represents its location.
Will deleting an area delete its devices?
No. The devices remain in Home Assistant but become unassigned. You can assign them to another area at any time.
Does every room need an area?
No. Create areas for spaces you use in Home Assistant. A storage room with no smart devices does not need one; you can add it later if that changes.

Troubleshooting

What if I assigned a device to the wrong area?
Return to Settings → Devices & services → Devices, select the device, and change the Area field. You can also override the area on an individual entity; that entity will then stop inheriting the device’s area.
Is it too late to reorganize a large device list?
No. Changing area assignments does not affect automations that target entity_id rather than device_id. Chapter 4 covers naming, and Chapter 8 explains why entity_id targets are safer.