Mastering Waffle Charts in R: A Visual Guide to Proportions

Overview

A waffle chart is a grid-based visualization used to represent proportions or percentages in a visually intuitive way. It typically consists of a 10×10 grid of squares, where each square represents 1% of a whole.

Example of a Waffle Chart

Useful: Explore how to Create a Waffle Chart in Tableau

Step-by-Step Guide

Load the required packages.

# load libraries

library(tidyverse)
library(waffle)
library(paletteer)

Load data set.

# load data

superstore<-read.csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bernardkilonzo-rigor/dataviz/main/data/Sample%20-%20Superstore.csv")

Computing sales proportion by shipping mode.

# computing sales proportions by shipping mode

sales_prop<-superstore%>%group_by(Ship.Mode)%>%
summarise(sales = sum(Sales))%>%
mutate(proprtion = sales/sum(sales))%>%
mutate(percnt = round(proprtion*100,0))

See the resulting table.

Creating a waffle chart to visualize proportion of sales by shipping mode.

# creating waffle chart

sales_prop%>%ggplot(aes(fill =Ship.Mode, values =percnt))+
geom_waffle(n_rows = 10, color ="white")+
scale_fill_paletteer_d("rockthemes::electric")

See the resulting view.

Formatting and customizing the waffle chart.

# creating and formatting the waffle chart

sales_prop%>%ggplot(aes(fill =Ship.Mode, values =percnt))+
geom_waffle(n_rows = 10, color ="white")+
scale_fill_paletteer_d("rockthemes::electric")+
labs(title = "Waffle Chart - Proportion of Sales by Shipping Mode",
caption = "Viz by: Bernard Kilonzo", fill ="Ship Mode")+
theme(panel.background = element_blank(),
axis.text = element_blank(),
axis.ticks = element_blank(),
plot.title = element_text(family = "serif", face = "bold", size = 13, color = "gray30"),
plot.caption = element_text(family = "serif", face = "italic",size = 9, color = "gray35"),
legend.title = element_text(family = "serif",face = "bold", size = 10, color = "gray30"),
legend.text = element_text(family = "serif", size = 9, color = "gray30"))

See the resulting view.

Replicate the viz: Link to code

Conclusion

Waffle charts offer a compelling and visually intuitive way to represent proportions and percentages, making them an excellent alternative to traditional pie charts or bar graphs - especially when communicating data to a broad audience. With R’s powerful visualization ecosystem, particularly the waffle package and its integration with ggplot2, creating these grid-based charts is both straightforward and highly customizable.

Throughout this article, we've explored the step-by-step process of building waffle charts in R - from installing the necessary packages and preparing your data, to customizing colors for maximum clarity and impact. Whether you're visualizing election results, demographic distributions, or progress toward a goal, waffle charts can help you tell a story that resonates.

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