Change default background color for matplotlib plots

Question

I am using ipython with matplotlib. Is it possible to configure the default background color for matplotlib plots? The curent (white)

Answer 1

You can customise matplotlib in a variety of ways.

If you're looking to customise across your entire computer then matplotlib uses the "matplotlibrc" configuration file as a default.

If you wish to edit this to change the default axes facecolor (the technical term for the background) then you'll need to uncomment and adjust this line:

#axes.facecolor : white # axes background color

If you wish to set your background colour to #CCCCCC then you should change the line to:

axes.facecolor : CCCCCC # axes background color

N.B. if you re-install matplotlib this will be overwritten. To prevent this you can save it in "HOME/.matplotlib/matplotlibrc" as the example comments state.

Should you wish to change it to a different colour temporarily then simply add the following at the top of your script:

import matplotlib as mpl

mpl.rcParams['axes.facecolor'] = '111111' # Or any suitable colour...

If you should wish to modify an individual matplotlib.axes object then just use ax.set_axis_bgcolor('...').

Answer 2

You need to set both the axes and figure background colors:

f = plt.figure(facecolor=".6")
ax = f.add_subplot(111, axisbg=".6")
ax.plot([0, 1, 2], [1, 0, 2])

There is additionally a distinction between the facecolor for the interactive plot and what gets saved; you also have to pass facecolor to f.savefig if you want a uniform background on the resulting file.

You can change the defaults with the following fields in the rcParams dictionary:

import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.rcParams["figure.facecolor"]
mpl.rcParams["axes.facecolor"]
mpl.rcParams["savefig.facecolor"]

Note that this works a little unexpectedly in the IPython notebook with an inline backend, where the "saved" version of the figure you see below the cell is not controlled by the figure parameter, but by the savefig paramter.