Linestyles in Matplotlib Python

In Matplotlib we can change appearance of lines in our plots by adjusting their style and can choose between solid, dashed, dotted or dash-dot lines to make our plots easier to understand. By default it uses a solid line while plotting data but we can change the line style using linestyle or ls argument in plot() method.

Syntax: plt.plot(x, y, linestyle=’line_style’, color=’color’)

where line_style is:

And colors can be:

Example 1: Dotted Line Style in Blue

• x = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]: Define x-values for the plot.
• y = [0, 1, 4, 9, 16]: Define y-values for the plot.
• plt.plot(x, y, linestyle=':', color='b', label='Dotted Line'): Plot the data with a dotted blue line and label it Dotted Line.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]
y = [0, 1, 4, 9, 16]
plt.plot(x, y, linestyle=':', color='b', label='Dotted Line')
plt.xlabel('X-axis')
plt.ylabel('Y-axis')
plt.title('Dotted Line Style')
plt.legend()
plt.show()

Output:

Dotted line

Example 2: Dash-dot Line Style in Yellow

• plt.plot(x, y, linestyle='-.', color='y', label='Dash-dot Line'): Plot the x and y values with a dash-dot yellow line and label it as Dash-dot Line.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14]
y = [4, 2, 8, 6, 10, 5, 12, 6]
plt.plot(x, y, linestyle='-.', color='y', label='Dash-dot Line')
plt.xlabel('X-axis')
plt.ylabel('Y-axis')
plt.title('Dash-dot Line Style')
plt.legend()
plt.show()

Output:

Dash-dot line

Example 3: Dashed Line Style in Green

• plt.plot(x, y, linestyle='--', color='g', label='Dashed Line'): Plot the x and y values with a green dashed line and label it as Dashed Line.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [0, 1, 12, 3, 4]
y = [0, 1, 14, 9, 20]
plt.plot(x, y, linestyle='--', color='g', label='Dashed Line')
plt.xlabel('X-axis')
plt.ylabel('Y-axis')
plt.title('Dashed Line Style')
plt.legend()
plt.show()

Output:

Dashed line

Example 4: Solid Line Style in Red

• plt.plot(x, y, linestyle='-', color='r', label='Solid Line'): Plot the x and y values with a solid red line and label it as Solid Line.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
x = [0, 10, 2, 13, 14]
y = [0, 11, 14, 19, 16]
plt.plot(x, y, linestyle='-', color='r', label='Solid Line')
plt.xlabel('X-axis')
plt.ylabel('Y-axis')
plt.title('Solid Line Style')
plt.legend()
plt.show()

Output:

Solid line

With these simple line style customizations we can make our Matplotlib plots interactive and easier to interpret. By exploring different line styles we can focus on trends, distinguish data series and improve overall readability of our visualizations.