No major tick marks showing using seaborn white style and cannot restore

Question

When I generate plots using the seaborn "white" style I see major tick labels but I don't see any major tick marks.

Setting major tick marks to be bigger using...

%matplotlib inline

import seaborn as sns
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

sns.set_style('white', {'axes.linewidth': 0.5})
plt.rcParams['xtick.major.size'] = 20
plt.rcParams['xtick.major.width'] = 4

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
plt.show()

...has no effect.

I can't find any option that would make the tick marks visible/invisible.

Anybody have any clues?

Answer 1

The rcParams 'xtick.major.size' and 'xtick.major.width' can indeed be used to change the length and width of the ticks. The rcParams 'xtick.bottom' and 'ytick.left' can be used to set the ticks on or off.

import seaborn as sns
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

sns.set_style('white', {'axes.linewidth': 0.5})
plt.rcParams['xtick.major.size'] = 20
plt.rcParams['xtick.major.width'] = 4
plt.rcParams['xtick.bottom'] = True
plt.rcParams['ytick.left'] = True

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
plt.show()

Answer 2

In case one wants to not mess with global rcParams, but manually tune by plot, one can use ax.tick_params()

import seaborn as sns
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

sns.set_style('white', {'axes.linewidth': 0.5})

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.tick_params(bottom=True, left=True)
plt.show()

The critical part is "enabling" the tick marks - in this case the bottom and left marks were enabled. If one wants marks on the four sides, using ax.tick_params(reset=True) might also be an option, though I'm not sure how this might affect other Seaborn tunings.

There are also a number of options listed in the function documentation that might be useful, although they do not apply directly to OP.

Note: this answer also works for other styles, including the default one, not just 'white'.