Add Panel Border to ggplot2 Plot in R (Example)

In this article you’ll learn how to draw a panel border to a ggplot graphic in the R programming language.

Table of contents:

Let’s dive into it!

Example Data, Add-On Packages & Default Plot

The first step is to create some data that we can use in the examples below:

data <- data.frame(x = c(4, 1, 3, 3, 7, 2),    # Create example data
                   y = 1:6)
data                                           # Print example data

Table 1 shows the structure of our exemplifying data: It contains six rows and two columns.

We also have to install and load the ggplot2 package, to be able to use the corresponding functions:

install.packages("ggplot2")                    # Install & load ggplot2
library("ggplot2")

Now, we can plot our data as follows:

ggp <- ggplot(data, aes(x, y)) +               # Create ggplot2 plot without panel border
  geom_point()
ggp                                            # Draw ggplot2 plot without panel boarder

As shown in Figure 1, the previous syntax has plotted a ggplot2 scatterplot without any panel borders.

Example: Draw Panel Border to ggplot2 Plot Using theme() Function & panel.border Argument

This example illustrates how to show a panel box around our ggplot2 plot. For this, we can use the theme function and the panel.border argument as shown below:

ggp +                                          # Add panel border to ggplot2 plot
  theme(panel.border = element_rect(color = "#1b98e0",
                                    fill = NA,
                                    size = 10))

In Figure 2 it is shown that we have created a ggplot2 plot with relatively thick blue panel borders using the previous R code.

Note that you can change the color and line width of our panel borders by modifying the color and size arguments within the element_rect function.

Video, Further Resources & Summary

In case you need more information on the R programming codes of this article, I recommend watching the following video which I have published on my YouTube channel. In the video, I show the R code of this tutorial in R:

Furthermore, you might want to have a look at some of the other articles on my website.

• Introduction to the ggplot2 Package
• Add Regression Line to ggplot2 Plot
• Add Legend without Border & White Background to Plot
• Add X & Y Axis Labels to ggplot2 Plot
• Add Image to Plot in R
• Add Greek Symbols to ggplot2 Plot
• R Graphics Gallery
• The R Programming Language

In this R tutorial you have learned how to add panel borders to plots. If you have additional questions, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments below.