R Colors: Amazing Resources You Want to Know

RColorBrewer palettes

• First, load the package as follow:

library("RColorBrewer")

• Usage in base plot:

barplot(c(2, 5, 8), col = brewer.pal(n = 3, name = "Dark2"))

• Usage in ggplots:

ggplot(iris, aes(Species, Sepal.Length)) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(fill = Species)) +
  scale_fill_brewer(palette = "Dark2")

Read more at: The A – Z Of Rcolorbrewer Palette

Viridis color palettes

• First, load the package as follow:

library("viridis")

• Usage in R base plots

barplot(c(2, 5, 8), col = viridis(3))

• Usage in ggplots:

ggplot(iris, aes(Species, Sepal.Length)) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(fill = Species)) +
  scale_fill_viridis(discrete = TRUE)

Read more at: Viridis color palettes

Scientific journal color palettes

The ggsci R package contains a collection of high-quality color palettes inspired by colors used in scientific journals, data visualization libraries, and more. For example:

• scale_color_npg() and scale_fill_npg(): Nature Publishing Group
• scale_color_aaas() and scale_fill_aaas(): American Association for the Advancement of Science
• scale_color_lancet() and scale_fill_lancet(): Lancet journal
• scale_color_jco() and scale_fill_jco(): Journal of Clinical Oncology

• First, load the package as follow:

library("ggsci")

• Usage in R base plots

barplot(c(2, 5, 8), col = pal_jco()(3))

• Usage in ggplots:

ggplot(iris, aes(Species, Sepal.Length)) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(fill = Species)) +
  scale_fill_jco()

Read more at: ggsci color palettes

Wes Anderson color palettes

The corresponding R package contains 16 color palettes from Wes Anderson movies. The available color palettes are shown in the chart below :

• First, load the package as follow:

library("wesanderson")

• Usage in R base plots

barplot(c(2, 5, 8), col = wes_palette("GrandBudapest1", n = 3))

• Usage in ggplots:

ggplot(iris, aes(Species, Sepal.Length)) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(fill = Species)) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = wes_palette("GrandBudapest1", n = 3))

Learn more at: Top R Color Palettes to Know for Great Data Visualization

R base color palettes

There are 5 R base functions that can be used to generate a vector of n contiguous colors: rainbow(n), heat.colors(n), terrain.colors(n), topo.colors(n), and cm.colors(n).

• Usage in R base plots:

barplot(1:5, col=rainbow(5))
# Use heat.colors
barplot(1:5, col=heat.colors(5))
# Use terrain.colors
barplot(1:5, col=terrain.colors(5))
# Use topo.colors
barplot(1:5, col=topo.colors(5))
# Use cm.colors
barplot(1:5, col=cm.colors(5))

• Usage in ggplots:

ggplot(iris, aes(Species, Sepal.Length)) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(fill = Species)) +
  scale_fill_manual(values = rainbow(3))