Add Grid Lines to a Plot
With Pyplot, you can use the grid()
function to add grid lines to the plot.
Example
Add grid lines to the plot:
import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = np.array([80, 85, 90, 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125]) y = np.array([240, 250, 260, 270, 280, 290, 300, 310, 320, 330]) plt.title(“Sports Watch Data”) plt.xlabel(“Average Pulse”) plt.ylabel(“Calorie Burnage”) plt.plot(x, y) plt.grid() plt.show() |
Result:

Specify Which Grid Lines to Display
You can use the axis
parameter in the grid()
function to specify which grid lines to display.
Legal values are: ‘x’, ‘y’, and ‘both’. Default value is ‘both’.
Example
Display only grid lines for the x-axis:
import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = np.array([80, 85, 90, 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125]) y = np.array([240, 250, 260, 270, 280, 290, 300, 310, 320, 330]) plt.title(“Sports Watch Data”) plt.xlabel(“Average Pulse”) plt.ylabel(“Calorie Burnage”) plt.plot(x, y) plt.grid(axis = ‘x’) plt.show() |
Result:

Example
Display only grid lines for the y-axis:
import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = np.array([80, 85, 90, 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125]) y = np.array([240, 250, 260, 270, 280, 290, 300, 310, 320, 330]) plt.title(“Sports Watch Data”) plt.xlabel(“Average Pulse”) plt.ylabel(“Calorie Burnage”) plt.plot(x, y) plt.grid(axis = ‘y’) plt.show() |
Result:

Set Line Properties for the Grid
You can also set the line properties of the grid, like this: grid(color = ‘color‘, linestyle = ‘linestyle‘, linewidth = number).
Example
Set the line properties of the grid:
import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = np.array([80, 85, 90, 95, 100, 105, 110, 115, 120, 125]) y = np.array([240, 250, 260, 270, 280, 290, 300, 310, 320, 330]) plt.title(“Sports Watch Data”) plt.xlabel(“Average Pulse”) plt.ylabel(“Calorie Burnage”) plt.plot(x, y) plt.grid(color = ‘green’, linestyle = ‘–‘, linewidth = 0.5) plt.show() |
Result:
