Available theme for ggplot2



A set of pre-built theme are available to quickly customize a ggplot2 chart. This post aims to give an overview of the available themes, provided by ggplot2 itself or by other packages.

ggplot2 section Data to Viz

Themes provided by ggplot2


Two main types of grid exist with ggplot2: major and minor. They are controled thanks to the panel.grid.major and panel.grid.minor options.

Once more, you can add the options .y or .x at the end of the function name to control one orientation only.

Features are wrapped in an element_line() function. Specifying element_blanck() will simply removing the grid.

# library
library(ggplot2)
library(gridExtra)
 
# create data
set.seed(123)
var=rnorm(1000)
 
# Without theme
plot1 <- qplot(var , fill=I(rgb(0.1,0.2,0.4,0.6)) )
 
# With themes
plot2 = plot1+theme_bw()+annotate("text", x = -1.9, y = 75, label = "bw()" , col="orange" , size=4)
plot3 = plot1+theme_classic()+annotate("text", x = -1.9, y = 75, label = "classic()" , col="orange" , size=4)
plot4 = plot1+theme_gray()+annotate("text", x = -1.9, y = 75, label = "gray()" , col="orange" , size=4)
plot5 = plot1+theme_linedraw()+annotate("text", x = -1.9, y = 75, label = "linedraw()" , col="orange" , size=4)
plot6 = plot1+theme_dark()+annotate("text", x = -1.9, y = 75, label = "dark()" , col="orange" , size=4)
plot7 = plot1+theme_get()+annotate("text", x = -1.9, y = 75, label = "get()" , col="orange" , size=4)
plot8 = plot1+theme_minimal()+annotate("text", x = -1.9, y = 75, label = "minimal()" , col="orange" , size=4)
 
 
# Arrange and display the plots into a 2x1 grid
grid.arrange(plot1,plot2,plot3,plot4, ncol=2)
grid.arrange(plot5,plot6,plot7,plot8, ncol=2)

Code used for the ggplot2 page.


Here is the code used for the examples displayed on the ggplot2 page. It shows how to used most of the common packages related to ggplot2 themes.

See how themes look like.

# library
library(ggplot2)
 
# My margini
mytheme <- theme(
      plot.margin=unit(rep(1.3,4),"cm")
      ) 

# Plot
p <- ggplot(iris, aes(x=Sepal.Length, y=Sepal.Width, color=Species, shape=Species)) + 
    geom_point(size=6, alpha=0.6, show.legend = FALSE)

setwd("~/Desktop/R-graph-gallery/img/graph")
png("192-ggplot-theme_default.png") ;  p + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_bw.png") ;  p + theme_bw() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_minimal.png") ;  p + theme_minimal() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_classic.png") ;  p + theme_classic() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_gray.png") ;  p + theme_gray() + mytheme ; dev.off()

#library(ggthemes)
png("192-ggplot-theme_excel.png") ;  p + theme_excel() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_economist.png") ;  p + theme_economist() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_fivethirtyeight.png") ;  p + theme_fivethirtyeight() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_tufte.png") ;  p + theme_tufte() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_gdocs.png") ;  p + theme_gdocs() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_wsj.png") ;  p + theme_wsj() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_calc.png") ;  p + theme_calc() + scale_colour_calc() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_hc.png") ;  p + theme_hc() + scale_colour_hc() + mytheme ; dev.off()

# library(hrbrthemes)
png("192-ggplot-theme_ipsum.png") ;  p + theme_ipsum() + scale_color_ipsum() + mytheme ; dev.off()

# library(egg)
png("192-ggplot-theme_article.png") ;  p + theme_article() + mytheme ; dev.off()

# library(ggpubr)
png("192-ggplot-theme_pubclean.png") ;  p + theme_pubclean() + mytheme ; dev.off()
# library(bigstatsr)
png("192-ggplot-theme_bigstatsr.png") ;  p + theme_bigstatsr() + mytheme ; dev.off()


png("192-ggplot-theme_excel.png") ;  p + theme_excel() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_excel.png") ;  p + theme_excel() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_excel.png") ;  p + theme_excel() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_excel.png") ;  p + theme_excel() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_excel.png") ;  p + theme_excel() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_excel.png") ;  p + theme_excel() + mytheme ; dev.off()
png("192-ggplot-theme_excel.png") ;  p + theme_excel() + mytheme ; dev.off()

theme_bigstatsr()

Related chart types


Grouped and Stacked barplot
Treemap
Doughnut
Pie chart
Dendrogram
Circular packing



Contact

This document is a work by Yan Holtz. Any feedback is highly encouraged. You can fill an issue on Github, drop me a message on Twitter, or send an email pasting yan.holtz.data with gmail.com.

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