Matplotlib: draw grid lines behind other graph elements

Question

According to this - http://matplotlib.1069221.n5.nabble.com/axis-elements-and-zorder-td5346.html - you can use Axis.set_axisbelow(True)

(I am currently installing matplotlib for the first time, so have no idea if that's correct - I just found it by googling "matplotlib z order grid" - "z order" is typically used to describe this kind of thing (z being the axis "out of the page"))

To me, it was unclear how to apply andrew cooke's answer, so this is a complete solution based on that:

ax.set_axisbelow(True)
ax.yaxis.grid(color='gray', linestyle='dashed')

If you want to validate the setting for all figures, you may set

plt.rc('axes', axisbelow=True)

or

plt.rcParams['axes.axisbelow'] = True

It works for Matplotlib>=2.0.

I had the same problem and the following worked:

[line.set_zorder(3) for line in ax.lines]
fig.show() # to update

Increase 3to a higher value if it does not work.

You can try to use one of Seaborn's styles. For instance:

import seaborn as sns  
sns.set_style("whitegrid")

Not only the gridlines will get behind but the looks are nicer.