How to Change Background Color in ggplot2
When you change the background colors in ggplot, it will be more visually pleasing and attract more attention than the default ones.
p + theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = 'white', color = 'blue'), panel.grid.major = element_line(color = 'green', linetype = 'dotted'), panel.grid.minor = element_line(color = 'green', size = 2))
Here are a few of the most popular themes, based on the below themes can automatically change the background colors.
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p + theme_bw() #white background and grey gridlines p + theme_minimal() #no background annotations p + theme_classic() #axis lines but no gridlines p + theme_linedraw() #black lines around the plot p + theme_light() # light gray lines and axis (more attention towards the data) p + theme_void() #Empty theme p + theme_dark() #Dark background designed to make colours pop out
Approach 1: Change Background Color in ggplot2
Let’s start by loading the package and visualizing the ToothGrowth dataset.
library(ggplot2) ToothGrowth$dose <- as.factor(ToothGrowth$dose) head(ToothGrowth)
len supp dose 1 4.2 VC 0.5 2 11.5 VC 0.5 3 7.3 VC 0.5 4 5.8 VC 0.5 5 6.4 VC 0.5 6 10.0 VC 0.5
p <- ggplot(ToothGrowth, aes(x=dose, y=len)) + geom_boxplot() p
The following code can be used to alter the panel’s background color as well as the major and minor gridlines:
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p + theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = 'white', color = 'blue'), panel.grid.major = element_line(color = 'green', linetype = 'dotted'), panel.grid.minor = element_line(color = 'green', size = 2))
Approach 2: Change background colors based on Built-in Themes
The following code demonstrates how to use multiple built-in ggplot2 themes to change the background color of plots automatically.
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p + theme_bw() #white background and grey gridlines
p + theme_minimal() #no background annotations
p + theme_classic() #axis lines but no gridlines
p + theme_linedraw() #black lines around the plot
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p + theme_light() # light gray lines and axis (more attention towards the data)
p + theme_void() #Empty theme
p + theme_dark() #Dark background designed to make colours pop out
The following R code shows how to change the background and grid lines of the plot panel
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p + theme( panel.background = element_rect(fill = "lightcyan", colour = "lightcyan", panel.grid.major = element_line(size = 0.5, linetype = 'solid', colour = "white"), panel.grid.minor = element_line(size = 0.25, linetype = 'solid', colour = "white"))
p + theme(plot.background = element_rect(fill = "lightpink")) #Change the plot background-color
