How do I change the background color of a plot made with ggplot2?

Question

By default, ggplot2 produces plots with a grey background. How do I change the color of the background of the plot?For example, a plot produced by the following code: library(ggplot2) myplot<-ggplot(data=data.frame(a=c(1,2,3), b=c(2,3,4)), aes(x=a, y=b)) + geom_line() myplot

Answer 1

You can change the ggplot background by changing the theme of the plot. You can change the background to a pure white background or a completely black background. You would do this using the same code you have above, but add another part. See example below:

ggplot(data=data.frame(a=c(1,2,3), b=c(2,3,4)), aes(x=a, y=b)) +

geom_line()+

theme_bw()

theme_bw() sets the background to white and uses black and white colors

theme_dark() sets the background to a dark grey/ black

For more information on how to modify the colors specific parts of the graph, please see: http://www.sthda.com/english/wiki/ggplot2-themes-and-background-colors-the-3-elements

You can also change the background to a specific color using the theme() function. The following is example code that would turn your background red

ggplot(data=data.frame(a=c(1,2,3), b=c(2,3,4)), aes(x=a, y=b)) +

geom_line()+

theme(panel.background = element_rect(fill = "red")).