Shade each region
Colour intensity carries the value. The right choice for rates, shares and per-capita figures, which are already adjusted for how big or populous a region is.
Open the templateAll maps
Michigan County Map Maker
A blank Michigan county map to print, and a builder to fill it with your own data. Download the free outline of all 83 counties across both peninsulas, or upload a spreadsheet and publish an interactive Michigan map you can embed anywhere.
Blank Michigan map, free to download
All 83 counties, as a clean outline. Print it, colour it in, or drop it into a document — no account and no attribution required.
Free for any use, including commercial and classroom. Generated from the same boundaries the builder uses.
Download SVGWhat a Michigan map shows
Michigan divides into 83 counties spread across two separated peninsulas, and that split is the first thing a map of the state has to cope with. The Lower Peninsula holds almost all of the population, with the Detroit metro counties — Wayne, Oakland and Macomb — carrying a large share of it in three shapes near the bottom-right corner. The Upper Peninsula is roughly a third of the land area and a tiny fraction of the people, so its counties are large, pale and easy to misread. Nearly everything the state publishes — unemployment, school enrolment, health outcomes, election returns, agricultural output — comes out at county level, which makes a county map the natural unit, as long as you remember that a county in the UP and a county in metro Detroit are not comparable things.
Three ways to draw Michigan
Shade the regions when your number is a rate, size a marker when it is a count. Getting this backwards is the most common way a data map misleads.
A sized marker per region
One symbol on each region, scaled by value. Use it for counts and totals, where shading the land area would just redraw the population map.
Open the templateProportional circles
Circles sized by value, sitting over the outline. Reads well when a few regions dominate and small ones would otherwise disappear into a shade.
Open the templateWhen to map Michigan
Your data is reported by Michigan county
MDHHS health indicators, labour figures from the Bureau of Labor Market Information, MDE school data and Secretary of State election returns are all published by county.
You are showing a rate or a share
Unemployment rate, vaccination share, share of votes, median household income. Rates already account for how many people live in a county, which is what shading a region needs.
You want to show the peninsula divide, or the metro-Detroit one
Michigan's two clearest stories are geographic: Upper Peninsula against Lower, and the three Detroit metro counties against the rest. Both are arguments a reader can see on a map and has to take on trust in a table.
You need a blank map to print or fill in
Classroom exercises, territory planning, colour-by-hand sessions. The free outline above prints cleanly at any size and keeps both peninsulas in one frame.
When not to map Michigan
You are mapping totals rather than rates
Shade by a raw count and Wayne County wins every time. Anything that grows simply because more people live there belongs on a sized symbol or bubble, not a shade.
Your unit is a city, a township or a school district
Michigan has well over a thousand townships and hundreds of school districts, and they do not stack neatly inside county lines. Mapping them onto counties will put your numbers in the wrong place.
Only the Lower Peninsula has data
A map where the entire UP is grey reads as missing data whatever the caption says. If coverage stops at the Mackinac Bridge, say so in the title or drop to the region that is actually covered.
The comparison is with other states
If the point is how Michigan sits against Ohio and Wisconsin, use the US county map or a states map so the reader can see across the border rather than guessing at it.
How to make a Michigan map
From a spreadsheet to a published map, step by step.
Download the blank map, or start from the template
The free outline above is a plain SVG of all 83 counties — print it, or drop it into a document. To build with data, open the PlotSet Michigan (counties) template, which comes with sample data already bound.
Prepare a county column and a value column
One row per county: the five-digit FIPS code or the county name in the first column, your number in the second. Michigan FIPS codes all begin 26.
Upload or connect your data
Import a CSV or Excel file, paste from a spreadsheet, or connect a Google Sheet so the map can be refreshed when the source updates.
Pick the style that fits the measure
Shade the counties for a rate, or switch to symbols or bubbles for a count. Symbols are particularly useful in Michigan, because they stop the empty northern counties from dominating the picture by sheer area.
Choose a colour scale on purpose
Sequential for a low-to-high measure, diverging only when a real midpoint exists — the state average, zero change, a 50 per cent line. Four to six steps read more precisely than a smooth gradient.
Publish, embed or export
Publish for a live interactive map with a tooltip on every county, or export a PNG, SVG or PDF for a report or a deck.
Start from the Michigan template with sample data already loaded, then swap in your own.
Open the templateGetting your Michigan data to join
What the place column has to look like, and where to find data that already matches.
All 83 counties, both peninsulas
68 in the Lower Peninsula and 15 in the Upper. The template draws them in one frame at their true relative positions, so the Straits of Mackinac gap is real rather than a rendering error.
The template spells the saints out in full
Saint Clair and Saint Joseph, not St. Clair and St. Joseph. Federal and state tables usually use the abbreviated form, so a name join will silently drop both counties. Joining on FIPS avoids it entirely.
Michigan FIPS codes start at 26
26001 is Alcona, 26165 is Wexford. Store the column as text so the codes keep their shape, and note that the county part is odd-numbered rather than sequential.
Where to get Michigan county data
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Bureau of Labor Market Information, the Michigan Department of Education and the Secretary of State all publish county tables, as does the Census Bureau's ACS.
Common mistakes on a Michigan map
Shading counts instead of rates
It produces a population map of south-east Michigan every time. Use a sized symbol for counts and keep shading for rates and shares.
Letting the Upper Peninsula set the impression
The UP is around a third of Michigan's land and a small fraction of its people, so it takes up a third of the map whatever the data says. A cartogram or a sized symbol is fairer when the story is about people.
Joining on names without checking the saints
Saint Clair, Saint Joseph and Grand Traverse are the usual failures, and a mismatch leaves a blank county rather than an error message. Join on FIPS where you can.
Using a rainbow colour scale
A sequence of hues has no natural order, so readers cannot tell high from low without checking the legend on every county. Use one hue, light to dark.
Michigan map questions
Yes. The outline above is a free SVG of all 83 Michigan counties — right-click to save it, print it, or drop it into a worksheet or document. No account needed.
Put your own data on the Michigan map
Upload a spreadsheet and publish an interactive map in a couple of minutes — free, no credit card.