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Removing gridlines in ggplot2 can be done by using the function theme(), with the argument element_blank() assigned to the panel.grid argument. This will remove any gridlines from the plot. To remove gridlines from specific sides of the plot, use the arguments panel.grid.major.x, panel.grid.major.y, panel.grid.minor.x and panel.grid.minor.y. For example, to remove the vertical gridlines, use panel.grid.major.x = element_blank(). To remove the horizontal gridlines, use panel.grid.major.y = element_blank(). To remove both vertical and horizontal gridlines, use panel.grid = element_blank().
The easiest way to remove gridlines in ggplot2 is to use theme_classic():
ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) +
geom_point() +
theme_classic()
Alternatively, you can use the following syntax to remove specific gridlines:
ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point() + theme_bw() + theme(axis.line = element_line(color='black'), plot.background = element_blank(), panel.grid.major = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank(), panel.border = element_blank())
The following examples show how to use both of these methods in practice.
Example 1: Remove Gridlines with theme_classic()
The following code shows how to remove gridlines from a ggplot2 plot using theme_classic():
library(ggplot2) #define data df <- data.frame(x=c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), y=c(6, 8, 14, 19, 29, 31)) #create ggplot with no gridlines ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point() + theme_classic()
Example 2: Remove Specific Gridlines
The following code shows how to remove gridlines from a ggplot2 plot using a bit more customization:
library(ggplot2) #define data df <- data.frame(x=c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), y=c(6, 8, 14, 19, 29, 31)) #create ggplot with no gridlines ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point() + theme_bw() + theme(axis.line = element_line(color='black'), plot.background = element_blank(), panel.grid.major = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank(), panel.border = element_blank())
This code allows you to remove specific gridlines. For example, we could use the following code to keep the major gridlines in the plot:
library(ggplot2) #define data df <- data.frame(x=c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), y=c(6, 8, 14, 19, 29, 31)) #create ggplot with no gridlines ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point() + theme_bw() + theme(axis.line = element_line(color='black'), plot.background = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank(), panel.border = element_blank())
Alternatively, we could use the following code to remove all gridlines but keep the panel border in the plot:
library(ggplot2) #define data df <- data.frame(x=c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), y=c(6, 8, 14, 19, 29, 31)) #create ggplot with no gridlines ggplot(df, aes(x=x, y=y)) + geom_point() + theme_bw() + theme(axis.line = element_line(color='black'), plot.background = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank(), panel.grid.major = element_blank())
