Matplotlib 2.x By Example

Color cycle

For quick plotting without having to set colors for each data series, Matplotlib uses a list of colors called the default property cycle, whereby each series is assigned one of the default colors in the cycle. In Matplotlib 2.0, the list has been changed from the original red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, noted as ['b', 'g', 'r', 'c', 'm', 'y', 'k'], to the current category10 color palette introduced by the Tableau software. As implied by the name, the new palette has 10 distinct colors suitable for categorical display. The list can be accessed by importing Matplotlib and calling matplotlib.rcParams['axes.prop_cycle'] in Python.