Matplotlib: coloring axis/tick labels

Question

How would one color y-axis label and tick labels in red?

So for example the "y-label" and values 0 through 40, to be colored in red.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

x = np.arange(10)

fig = plt.figure()
ax = plt.subplot(111)
ax.set_ylabel("y-label")

for i in xrange(5):
    ax.plot(x, i * x, label='$y = %ix$' % i)

ax.legend()

plt.show()

Solution 1

  label = plt.ylabel("y-label")
  label.set_color("red")

similarly, you can obtain and modify the tick labels:

[i.set_color("red") for i in plt.gca().get_xticklabels()]

Solution 2

The xlabel can be colorized when setting it,

ax.set_xlabel("x-label", color="red")

For setting the ticklabels' color, one may either use tick_params, which sets the ticklabels' as well as the ticks' color

ax.tick_params(axis='x', colors='red')

Alternatively, plt.setp can be used to only set the ticklabels' color, without changing the ticks' color.

plt.setp(ax.get_xticklabels(), color="red")

Note that for changing the properties on the y-axis, one can replace the x with a y in the above.

Comments

[eric]

I wonder why for tick_params it uses the keyword colors and not color like the others? (Just spent 10 minutes debugging this because I used the wrong word)

[Tobias P. G.]

I would generally suggest a for loop in the second case, since assigning and returning values in a list comprehension is considered bad practice.

[markling]

Documentation of tick_params here: matplotlib.org/3.1.1/api/_as_gen/… (though seems incomplete ... font weight?)