pythonmatplotlibcolormap

How to pick a new color for each plotted line within a figure

I'd like to NOT specify a color for each plotted line, and have each line get a distinct color. But if I run:

from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
for i in range(20):
    plt.plot([0, 1], [i, i])

plt.show()

then I get this output:

Image of the graph output by the code above

If you look at the image above, you can see that matplotlib attempts to pick colors for each line that are different, but eventually it re-uses colors - the top ten lines use the same colors as the bottom ten. I just want to stop it from repeating already used colors AND/OR feed it a list of colors to use.

Solution

  • matplotlib 1.5+

    You can use axes.set_prop_cycle (example).

    matplotlib 1.0-1.4

    You can use axes.set_color_cycle (example).

    matplotlib 0.x

    You can use Axes.set_default_color_cycle.