Add panel border to ggplot2

Question

I have been asked to place a full border around my plot below:

Using panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black") results in losing in the plot becoming blank.

I can't use theme_bw() as it does not have the same functionality as the usual theme, the code I am currently using is below:

graph<-ggplot(d,aes(x=d$AOE, y=d$MEI)             )+   geom_point(shape=20, size=3)+   geom_rug()+   annotate("text", x = -1.1, y = 14000, label = "27/04/2011") +   annotate("text", x = -1.3, y = 10400, label = "03/04/1974") +   xlab("MEI")+   ylab("AOE")+   scale_y_log10()+   theme(axis.text.y   = element_text(size=14),         axis.text.x   = element_text(size=14),         axis.title.y  = element_text(size=14),         axis.title.x  = element_text(size=14),         panel.background = element_blank(),         panel.grid.major = element_blank(),          panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),         axis.line = element_line(colour = "black")   )  graph  

Any advice on how to get a full black border would be very much appreciated!

Answer 1

To use panel.border you also have to specify a blank fill using fill=NA.

Try this:

library(ggplot2)  ggplot(mtcars, aes(mpg, disp)) + geom_point() + geom_rug() +   theme(axis.text.y   = element_text(size=14),         axis.text.x   = element_text(size=14),         axis.title.y  = element_text(size=14),         axis.title.x  = element_text(size=14),         panel.background = element_blank(),         panel.grid.major = element_blank(),          panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),         axis.line = element_line(colour = "black"),         panel.border = element_rect(colour = "black", fill=NA, size=5)   ) 

Answer 2

You can use theme_bw() and theme() together. This should work:

# creating some data set.seed(1) d <- data.frame(MEI=rnorm(100), AOE=rlnorm(100, 10, 5))  # creating the plot ggplot(d,aes(x=MEI, y=AOE)) +   geom_point(shape=20, size=3) +   geom_rug() +   scale_y_log10() +   theme_bw() +   theme(panel.grid.major = element_blank(),          panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),         panel.background = element_rect(colour = "black", size=4)) 

this gives:

---

A solution without theme_bw() and inspired by @Andrie, but with the use of panel.background instead of panel.border:

ggplot(d,aes(x=MEI, y=AOE)) +   geom_point(shape=20, size=3) +   geom_rug() +   scale_y_log10() +   theme(panel.grid.major = element_blank(),          panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),         panel.background = element_rect(colour = "black", size=4, fill=NA)) 

this will give the exact same plot. The difference between panel.background and panel.border is that panel.background is drawn underneath the plot and panel.border is drawn on top of the plot.