As an (optional) nicety I like having Plymouth installed for showing a boot splash screen on the loader. What’s especially nice is that after this is enabled you can still press Esc to show the output (for debugging startup issues).

Install Plymouth 

apt install plymouth plymouth-themes

Configure Plymouth Theme

List themes available for Plymouth:

plymouth-set-default-theme -l

Set the theme:

plymouth-set-default-theme -R bgrt

Set Command Line Arguments

Edit the /etc/kernel/cmdline (or wherever you set command line arguments for the kernel) and add the quiet and splash arguments to show the Plymouth splash screen:

root=... quiet splash
Note
This assumes that you have previously followed the Secure Boot guide.

Hide the Cursor on Startup

Hide the cursor on boot by setting the following (additional) kernel parameter:

vt.global_cursor_default=0

To recover the cursor in TTY, run the following:

setterm -cursor on >> /etc/issue

Update initramfs

For the changes to take effect, update your initramfs:

update-initramfs -u -k all