How to change the legend edgecolor and facecolor in matplotlib

Question

Is there while rcParams['legend.frameon'] = 'False' a simple way to fill the legend area background with a given colour. More specifically I would like the grid not to be seen on the legend area because it disturbs the text reading.

The keyword framealpha sounds like what I need but it doesn't change anything.

import matplotlib as mpl import matplotlib.pyplot as plt mpl.rcParams['legend.frameon'] = 'False' plt.plot(range(5), label = u"line") plt.grid(True) plt.legend(loc = best) plt.show() 

I've also tried:

legend = plt.legend(frameon = 1) frame = legend.get_frame() frame.set_color('white') 

but then I need to ask how can I change the background colour while keeping the frame on? Sometimes I want it ON with a background colour other than white. And also, is there a way of changing the colour of the frame? With the above code I was expecting to change the colour of the frame only, not the background.

Answer 1

You can set the edge color and the face color separately like this:

frame.set_facecolor('green') frame.set_edgecolor('red') 

There's more information under FancyBboxPatch here.

Answer 2

Using matplotlib.pyplot, plt.legend(facecolor='white', framealpha=1) will give your legend a white background without transparency.