I am making a scatter plot in matplotlib and need to change the background of the actual plot to black. I know how to change the face color of the plot using:
fig = plt.figure()
fig.patch.set_facecolor('xkcd:mint green')
https://i.stack.imgur.com/UN6YB.png
My issue is that this changes the color of the space around the plot. How to I change the actual background color of the plot?
ax.patch.set_facecolor('black')
(where ax
is the axes instance). fig.patch
is the figure background and ax.patch
is the axes background.
mint green
is possibly the worst color you can choose for a background. I love it :D
Use the set_facecolor(color)
method of the axes
object, which you've created one of the following ways:
You created a figure and axis/es together fig, ax = plt.subplots(nrows=1, ncols=1)
You created a figure, then axis/es later fig = plt.figure() ax = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1) # nrows, ncols, index
You used the stateful API (if you're doing anything more than a few lines, and especially if you have multiple plots, the object-oriented methods above make life easier because you can refer to specific figures, plot on certain axes, and customize either) plt.plot(...) ax = plt.gca()
Then you can use set_facecolor
:
ax.set_facecolor('xkcd:salmon')
ax.set_facecolor((1.0, 0.47, 0.42))
https://i.stack.imgur.com/2wFc6.png
As a refresher for what colors can be:
matplotlib.colors Matplotlib recognizes the following formats to specify a color: an RGB or RGBA tuple of float values in [0, 1] (e.g., (0.1, 0.2, 0.5) or (0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.3)); a hex RGB or RGBA string (e.g., '#0F0F0F' or '#0F0F0F0F'); a string representation of a float value in [0, 1] inclusive for gray level (e.g., '0.5'); one of {'b', 'g', 'r', 'c', 'm', 'y', 'k', 'w'}; a X11/CSS4 color name; a name from the xkcd color survey; prefixed with 'xkcd:' (e.g., 'xkcd:sky blue'); one of {'tab:blue', 'tab:orange', 'tab:green', 'tab:red', 'tab:purple', 'tab:brown', 'tab:pink', 'tab:gray', 'tab:olive', 'tab:cyan'} which are the Tableau Colors from the ‘T10’ categorical palette (which is the default color cycle); a “CN” color spec, i.e. 'C' followed by a single digit, which is an index into the default property cycle (matplotlib.rcParams['axes.prop_cycle']); the indexing occurs at artist creation time and defaults to black if the cycle does not include color. All string specifications of color, other than “CN”, are case-insensitive.
One method is to manually set the default for the axis background color within your script (see Customizing matplotlib):
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.rcParams['axes.facecolor'] = 'black'
This is in contrast to Nick T's method which changes the background color for a specific axes
object. Resetting the defaults is useful if you're making multiple different plots with similar styles and don't want to keep changing different axes
objects.
Note: The equivalent for
fig = plt.figure()
fig.patch.set_facecolor('black')
from your question is:
plt.rcParams['figure.facecolor'] = 'black'
Something like this? Use the axisbg
keyword to subplot
:
>>> from matplotlib.figure import Figure
>>> from matplotlib.backends.backend_agg import FigureCanvasAgg as FigureCanvas
>>> figure = Figure()
>>> canvas = FigureCanvas(figure)
>>> axes = figure.add_subplot(1, 1, 1, axisbg='red')
>>> axes.plot([1,2,3])
[<matplotlib.lines.Line2D object at 0x2827e50>]
>>> canvas.print_figure('red-bg.png')
(Granted, not a scatter plot, and not a black background.)
https://i.stack.imgur.com/fYiEK.png
plt.subplot('111', axisbg='black')
before the plotting commands, using Windows.
axis_bg
axis_bgcolor
were deprecated in matplotlib 2.0.0 and removed in matplotlib 2.2.0
Simpler answer:
ax = plt.axes()
ax.set_facecolor('silver')
If you already have axes
object, just like in Nick T's answer, you can also use
ax.patch.set_facecolor('black')
The easiest thing is probably to provide the color when you create the plot :
fig1 = plt.figure(facecolor=(1, 1, 1))
or
fig1, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(nrows=1, ncols=2, facecolor=(1, 1, 1))
One suggestion in other answers is to use ax.set_axis_bgcolor("red")
. This however is deprecated, and doesn't work on MatPlotLib >= v2.0.
There is also the suggestion to use ax.patch.set_facecolor("red")
(works on both MatPlotLib v1.5 & v2.2). While this works fine, an even easier solution for v2.0+ is to use
ax.set_facecolor("red")
ax.set_axis_bgcolor("black")
works on Python v2.7.14/MPL v1.5.1, but ax.set_facecolor()
does not. Somewhere between MPL v1.5.1 and v2.2.0 the proper function got switched.
ax.patch.set_facecolor("red")
. Nut from matplotlib 2.0 on the recommended way is ax.set_facecolor
.
In addition to the answer of NickT, you can also delete the background frame by setting it to "none" as explain here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/67126649/8669161
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.rcParams['axes.facecolor'] = 'none'
I think this might be useful for some people:
If you want to change the color of the background that surrounds the figure, you can use this:
fig.patch.set_facecolor('white')
So instead of this:
https://i.stack.imgur.com/J5uaH.png
you get this:
https://i.stack.imgur.com/guOvX.png
Obviously you can set any color you'd want.
P.S. In case you accidentally don't see any difference between the two plots, try looking at StackOverflow using darkmode.
Success story sharing
MethodNotFound