Bar mekko chart: definition, examples, and best practices.

What is a bar mekko chart?

A bar mekko keeps the familiar bar geometry but lets column width encode a second measure. Height might be revenue. Width might be number of accounts. Readers see concentration immediately: a short, wide bar is many small accounts, a tall, narrow bar is a few large ones.

Do not confuse it with a marimekko. A bar mekko varies width only. A marimekko also splits each column into shares, so it carries two dimensions of composition at once.

A worked example

A trans-Pacific air freight cost curve. Height is price per lb, width is available space in boxes, so carriers are sorted from most to least expensive and the width shows how much capacity sits behind each price. Six of twelve carriers shown.

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When to use a bar mekko chart

• Showing revenue against account count by segment
• Plotting margin contribution against volume by SKU family
• Highlighting concentration risk in a customer or supplier base
• Any view where equal-width bars would hide how uneven the base is

When not to use it

• When you also need competitor or product share inside each column, use a marimekko
• When width does not encode a meaningful second measure, use a normal stacked bar

How to read it

Read height as the primary measure and width as the secondary measure. Area roughly tracks the product of the two, which is why concentration jumps out.

Best practices

• State what width represents directly on the chart. Readers default to equal-width bars
• Keep the number of columns small enough that width differences stay obvious
• Sort columns by the story you want, usually by revenue or by width
• Use a stacked fill only when the segments are part of the narrative
• Do not use a bar mekko as a decorative alternative to a plain bar chart