Changing matplotlib default color while keeping color name

Question

I would like to change matplotlib's default colors. As I already tried by myself and found a solution to my problem by changing the default color cycler, this is not the perfect solution I was looking for :

import matplotlib as mpl

mpl.rcParams['axes.prop_cycle'] = mpl.cycler(color=["#013c9b",# my Blue
                                                    "#e0012e",# my Red
                                                    "#80cd59",# my Green
                                                    "#f6960a",# my Orange
                                                    "#4f94d4",# my Light Blue
                                                    "#ffd800",# my Yellow
                                                    "#6f7072",# my Grey
                                                    ])

x = np.linspace(1, 10, 1000)
for i in range(1, 6):
  y = np.sin(i*x) * i
  plt.plot(x,y)

While I achieve the results with the default color cycle, it is not very convenient if I want to plot with one of my specific color as I need to do something like that :

y1_in_red = np.sin(2*x) * 2
y2_in_green = np.sin(3*x) * 3

my_Red = "#e0012e"    # <-it's not very convenient/clean to do that
my_Blue = "#80cd59" # <-it's not very convenient/clean to do that

plt.plot(x, y1_in_red, color=my_Red)
plt.plot(x, y2_in_green, color=my_Blue)

The first problem with this solution is the yticks but i can set it back to normal. The second problem is it is not as clean/as efficient as I want. I would like to know if there is a way to change the default red (and the other colors) of matplotlib so I can just do something like that to achieve the same result as above :

y1_in_red = np.sin(2*x) * 2
y2_in_green = np.sin(3*x) * 3

# ...
# some code
# ...

plt.plot(x, y1_in_red, color='r')
plt.plot(x, y2_in_green, color='b')

tomjn · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-09 14:48:09Z

2

The colors come from a dictionary of named colors you can access with matplotlib.colors.get_named_colors_mapping(), so you could for example replace r and b with your red and blue

from matplotlib.colors import get_named_colors_mapping
get_named_colors_mapping()["r"] = "#e0012e"
get_named_colors_mapping()["b"] = "#013c9b"

Then you can use them as you normally would

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt 
plt.plot([1, 2, 3], [1, 2, 3], "r")  # will use your red

answered Apr 9, 2021 at 14:48

tomjn

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