[python] How to change the color of the axis, ticks and labels for a plot in matplotlib

I'd like to Change the color of the axis, as well as ticks and value-labels for a plot I did using matplotlib and PyQt.

Any ideas?

• For those using pandas.DataFrame.plot(), matplotlib.axes.Axes is returned when creating a plot from a dataframe. As such, the dataframe plot can be assigned to a variable, ax, which enables the usage of the associated formatting methods.
• The default plotting backend for pandas, is matplotlib.

import pandas as pd

# test dataframe
data = {'a': range(20), 'date': pd.bdate_range('2021-01-09', freq='D', periods=20)}
df = pd.DataFrame(data)

# plot the dataframe and assign the returned axes
ax = df.plot(x='date', color='green', ylabel='values', xlabel='date', figsize=(8, 6))

# set various colors
ax.spines['bottom'].set_color('blue')
ax.spines['top'].set_color('red') 
ax.spines['right'].set_color('magenta')
ax.spines['left'].set_color('orange')
ax.xaxis.label.set_color('purple')
ax.yaxis.label.set_color('silver')
ax.tick_params(colors='red', which='both')  # 'both' refers to minor and major axes

If you have several figures or subplots that you want to modify, it can be helpful to use the matplotlib context manager to change the color, instead of changing each one individually. The context manager allows you to temporarily change the rc parameters only for the immediately following indented code, but does not affect the global rc parameters.

This snippet yields two figures, the first one with modified colors for the axis, ticks and ticklabels, and the second one with the default rc parameters.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
with plt.rc_context({'axes.edgecolor':'orange', 'xtick.color':'red', 'ytick.color':'green', 'figure.facecolor':'white'}):
    # Temporary rc parameters in effect
    fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(1,2)
    ax1.plot(range(10))
    ax2.plot(range(10))
# Back to default rc parameters
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(range(10))

You can type plt.rcParams to view all available rc parameters, and use list comprehension to search for keywords:

# Search for all parameters containing the word 'color'
[(param, value) for param, value in plt.rcParams.items() if 'color' in param]

motivated by previous contributors, this is an example of three axes.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

x_values1=[1,2,3,4,5]
y_values1=[1,2,2,4,1]

x_values2=[-1000,-800,-600,-400,-200]
y_values2=[10,20,39,40,50]

x_values3=[150,200,250,300,350]
y_values3=[-10,-20,-30,-40,-50]


fig=plt.figure()
ax=fig.add_subplot(111, label="1")
ax2=fig.add_subplot(111, label="2", frame_on=False)
ax3=fig.add_subplot(111, label="3", frame_on=False)

ax.plot(x_values1, y_values1, color="C0")
ax.set_xlabel("x label 1", color="C0")
ax.set_ylabel("y label 1", color="C0")
ax.tick_params(axis='x', colors="C0")
ax.tick_params(axis='y', colors="C0")

ax2.scatter(x_values2, y_values2, color="C1")
ax2.set_xlabel('x label 2', color="C1") 
ax2.xaxis.set_label_position('bottom') # set the position of the second x-axis to bottom
ax2.spines['bottom'].set_position(('outward', 36))
ax2.tick_params(axis='x', colors="C1")
ax2.set_ylabel('y label 2', color="C1")       
ax2.yaxis.tick_right()
ax2.yaxis.set_label_position('right') 
ax2.tick_params(axis='y', colors="C1")

ax3.plot(x_values3, y_values3, color="C2")
ax3.set_xlabel('x label 3', color='C2')
ax3.xaxis.set_label_position('bottom')
ax3.spines['bottom'].set_position(('outward', 72))
ax3.tick_params(axis='x', colors='C2')
ax3.set_ylabel('y label 3', color='C2')
ax3.yaxis.tick_right()
ax3.yaxis.set_label_position('right') 
ax3.spines['right'].set_position(('outward', 36))
ax3.tick_params(axis='y', colors='C2')


plt.show()