List of named colors

This plots a list of the named colors supported in matplotlib. Note that xkcd colors are supported as well, but are not listed here for brevity.

For more information on colors in matplotlib see

• the Specifying Colors tutorial;
• the matplotlib.colors API;
• the Color Demo.

from matplotlib.patches import Rectangle
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.colors as mcolors


def plot_colortable(colors, title, sort_colors=True, emptycols=0):

    cell_width = 212
    cell_height = 22
    swatch_width = 48
    margin = 12
    topmargin = 40

    # Sort colors by hue, saturation, value and name.
    if sort_colors is True:
        by_hsv = sorted((tuple(mcolors.rgb_to_hsv(mcolors.to_rgb(color))),
                         name)
                        for name, color in colors.items())
        names = [name for hsv, name in by_hsv]
    else:
        names = list(colors)

    n = len(names)
    ncols = 4 - emptycols
    nrows = n // ncols + int(n % ncols > 0)

    width = cell_width * 4 + 2 * margin
    height = cell_height * nrows + margin + topmargin
    dpi = 72

    fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(width / dpi, height / dpi), dpi=dpi)
    fig.subplots_adjust(margin/width, margin/height,
                        (width-margin)/width, (height-topmargin)/height)
    ax.set_xlim(0, cell_width * 4)
    ax.set_ylim(cell_height * (nrows-0.5), -cell_height/2.)
    ax.yaxis.set_visible(False)
    ax.xaxis.set_visible(False)
    ax.set_axis_off()
    ax.set_title(title, fontsize=24, loc="left", pad=10)

    for i, name in enumerate(names):
        row = i % nrows
        col = i // nrows
        y = row * cell_height

        swatch_start_x = cell_width * col
        text_pos_x = cell_width * col + swatch_width + 7

        ax.text(text_pos_x, y, name, fontsize=14,
                horizontalalignment='left',
                verticalalignment='center')

        ax.add_patch(
            Rectangle(xy=(swatch_start_x, y-9), width=swatch_width,
                      height=18, facecolor=colors[name])
        )

    return fig

plot_colortable(mcolors.BASE_COLORS, "Base Colors",
                sort_colors=False, emptycols=1)
plot_colortable(mcolors.TABLEAU_COLORS, "Tableau Palette",
                sort_colors=False, emptycols=2)

plot_colortable(mcolors.CSS4_COLORS, "CSS Colors")

# Optionally plot the XKCD colors (Caution: will produce large figure)
#xkcd_fig = plot_colortable(mcolors.XKCD_COLORS, "XKCD Colors")
#xkcd_fig.savefig("XKCD_Colors.png")

plt.show()

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References

The use of the following functions, methods, classes and modules is shown in this example:

import matplotlib
matplotlib.colors
matplotlib.colors.rgb_to_hsv
matplotlib.colors.to_rgba
matplotlib.figure.Figure.get_size_inches
matplotlib.figure.Figure.subplots_adjust
matplotlib.axes.Axes.text
matplotlib.patches.Rectangle