Explore 26 Matplotlib Styles and How to Set Chinese Fonts

1 Set Plot Style

Matplotlib provides many built‑in plotting styles. You can view all available styles with plt.style.available and apply a style using plt.style.use() . The library includes 26 styles such as 'Solarize_Light2', 'bmh', 'ggplot', 'seaborn', and others.

<code>import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
# Plot y = sin(x) with default style
x = np.linspace(-2*np.pi, 2*np.pi, 1000)
y = np.sin(x)
plt.plot(x, y, label='y=sin(x)')
plt.title('Default Style')
plt.legend()
plt.show()</code>

The following script iterates over all styles, creates a subplot for each, and displays the resulting figures side by side:

<code>plt.figure(figsize=(18,20))
i = 1
for style in plt.style.available:
    plt.style.use(style)
    plt.subplot(7,4,i)
    plt.plot(x, y, label=style)
    plt.legend()
    i = i + 1
plt.show()</code>

Different styles affect colors, grid lines, titles, and overall aesthetics, allowing you to choose a visual theme that matches your preference.

2 Set Chinese

When a plot contains Chinese characters without proper font configuration, the characters appear as garbled symbols. The example below shows this issue with the default style.

<code>import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
x = np.linspace(-2*np.pi, 2*np.pi, 1000)
y = np.sin(x)
plt.plot(x, y, label='y=sin(x)')
plt.title('默认风格')
plt.legend()
plt.show()</code>

To correctly display Chinese text, set the font family to a Chinese font (e.g., SimHei) and disable the Unicode minus sign handling before plotting:

<code>plt.rcParams['font.family'] = ['SimHei']  # Set Chinese font
plt.rcParams['axes.unicode_minus'] = False
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
x = np.linspace(-2*np.pi, 2*np.pi, 1000)
y = np.sin(x)
plt.plot(x, y, label='y=sin(x)')
plt.title('默认风格')
plt.legend()
plt.show()</code>

If the specified Chinese font is not installed on the system, you need to check which Chinese fonts are available and import one that exists.