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To show horizontal grid lines in Matplotlib, call ax.grid(axis="y") on your Axes object. To control whether those lines sit behind or in front of your bars, lines, and markers, call ax.set_axisbelow() with True, "line", or False. Both calls are part of the Matplotlib Axes API, and the sections below cover styling, tick groups, layering modes, and version differences.
Draw horizontal grid lines with Axes.grid
Horizontal grid lines are the gridlines that run along the y-axis, one at each y-tick. Matplotlib exposes them through the axis argument of Axes.grid. Passing axis="y" limits the grid to the y-axis, so vertical lines are not drawn.
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import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.bar(["Q1", "Q2", "Q3", "Q4"], [12, 18, 9, 15])
ax.grid(axis="y")
plt.show()Three arguments control which gridlines appear and how they look:
axischooses the direction."y"gives horizontal lines,"x"gives vertical lines, and"both"draws both.whichchooses the tick group."major"uses major ticks,"minor"uses minor ticks, and"both"uses both groups. Minor gridlines only appear if the axis has minor ticks, which you add with a locator such asax.yaxis.set_minor_locator().- Line properties such as
color,linestyle, andlinewidthstyle the lines. They follow the same names as Line2D properties.
A light, dashed horizontal grid for a chart with both tick groups looks like this:
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ax.grid(axis="y", which="both", color="0.85", linestyle="--", linewidth=0.7)The value "0.85" is a grey shade on the 0 (black) to 1 (white) scale, which keeps the grid readable without competing with the data.
Put gridlines behind or in front of plotted data
Gridlines are drawn as part of the axis, so their layer is governed by the axis z-order. Axes.set_axisbelow sets that layer for the ticks and gridlines together. Its documentation describes it as setting “whether axis ticks and gridlines are above or below most artists.” It does not control individual gridlines separately.
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The method accepts three values. Each maps to a fixed z-order:
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Value passed to set_axisbelow |
Gridlines and ticks drawn above | Gridlines and ticks drawn below | Z-order of the axis |
|---|---|---|---|
True |
Nothing in the Axes | Patches (bars, spans, filled areas) and lines and markers | 0.5 |
"line" |
Patches | Lines and markers | 1.5 |
False |
Patches and lines | Nothing in the Axes | 2.5 |
The default z-order of patches is 1 and of lines and markers is 2, which explains the middle row. In "line" mode the grid sits between those two layers, so it stays visible over a bar but does not cross a line or marker.
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Choose the mode by the effect you want:
Trueis the usual choice for bar charts and shaded regions. The grid recedes behind both fills and data lines."line"keeps the grid visible through bars while leaving lines and markers clean. This is the Matplotlib default.Falseplaces the grid over everything, which is useful only when the gridlines are meant to read as an overlay, such as a reference scale on a heatmap-style figure. Expect it to reduce the contrast of the data beneath it.
Set the mode once per Axes, after plotting or before, since it applies to the whole axis:
ax.set_axisbelow(True)If none of the three modes gives the layering you need, the Axes.grid documentation points to setting the z-order on the axis itself, which gives finer control than the three named modes.
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Defaults and version differences
Matplotlib’s configuration documentation lists the rcParams defaults that govern these settings:
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axes.gridisFalse, so no grid appears unless you request one.axes.grid.axisis"both", so a grid request without anaxisargument covers both directions.axes.grid.whichis"major".axes.axisbelowis"line", which is why gridlines appear over bars by default.
The method pages cited here were versioned differently when checked. The Axes.grid page and the Axes API index were in the 3.11.2 stable documentation, and the set_axisbelow page was in the 3.10.0 documentation. The arguments and z-order values described above are the ones in those pages. If your installed version differs, check matplotlib.__version__ and the matching documentation before relying on exact behavior.
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In practice, the most reliable way to match a chart to a version is to set the grid and layering explicitly in code rather than rely on the rcParams defaults, since a shared stylesheet or a changed axes.axisbelow value will change the result without any change to the plotting call.
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