Styling & Themes

Install: dotnet add package MatPlotLibNet

30 built-in themes

Light themes	Dark themes	Accessibility	Operator (control room)
Theme.Default	Theme.Dark	Theme.ColorBlindSafe	Theme.OpsNight
Theme.Seaborn	Theme.Cyberpunk	Theme.HighContrast	Theme.OpsPanel
Theme.Ggplot	Theme.Nord		Theme.OpsWarm
Theme.FiveThirtyEight	Theme.Dracula		Theme.OpsContrast
Theme.Bmh	Theme.Monokai
Theme.Solarize	Theme.Catppuccin
Theme.Grayscale	Theme.Gruvbox
Theme.Paper	Theme.OneDark
Theme.Presentation	Theme.Neon
Theme.Poster
Theme.GitHub
Theme.Minimal
Theme.Retro
Theme.MatplotlibClassic
Theme.MatplotlibV2

See the Themes cookbook page for visual examples and custom theme building.

PropCycler

A prop cycler cycles colors, line styles, line widths and markers across multi-series plots. The series at place i takes the cycler's entry i, in the plot and in its legend entry; a series that sets one of these itself keeps its own:

var cycler = new PropCyclerBuilder()
    .WithColors(Colors.Tab10Blue, Colors.Orange, Colors.Green, Colors.Red)
    .WithLineStyles(LineStyle.Solid, LineStyle.Dashed, LineStyle.Dotted, LineStyle.DashDot)
    .Build();

var theme = Theme.CreateFrom(Theme.Default).WithPropCycler(cycler).Build();

Plt.Create()
    .WithTheme(theme)
    .AddSubPlot(1, 1, 1, ax =>
    {
        ax.Plot(x, y1, s => s.Label = "Series 1");
        ax.Plot(x, y2, s => s.Label = "Series 2");
        // colors and line styles are assigned automatically
        ax.WithLegend(LegendPosition.UpperRight);
    })
    .Save("styled.svg");

Grid and spine styling

Plt.Create()
    .AddSubPlot(1, 1, 1, ax => ax
        .Plot(x, y)
        // Grid with custom styling
        .WithGrid(g => g with
        {
            Color = Colors.LightGray,
            LineStyle = LineStyle.Dotted,
            LineWidth = 0.5,
            Alpha = 0.7
        })
        // Spine visibility
        .WithSpines(s => s with
        {
            Top = s.Top with { Visible = false },       // hide top spine
            Right = s.Right with { Visible = false },   // hide right spine
            Left = s.Left with { LineWidth = 1.2 },
            Bottom = s.Bottom with { LineWidth = 1.2 }
        })
        // Or use the shorthand:
        // .HideTopSpine()
        // .HideRightSpine()
    )
    .Save("grid_spines.svg");

Tight margins

Remove all padding around the data:

Plt.Create()
    .AddSubPlot(1, 1, 1, ax => ax
        .Plot(x, y)
        .WithTightMargins()     // data touches spines
        .WithYTicksMirrored()   // Y ticks on both sides
        .WithXTicksMirrored()   // X ticks on top and bottom
    )
    .Save("tight_margins.svg");

Scientific paper template

The template applies publication-quality defaults: hidden top and right spines, tight layout and 150 dpi. The dpi sizes the PNG: the template's default 800 × 600 is drawn as a 1250 × 938 PNG, the same layout drawn finer. An SVG and a PDF page are vector drawings and do not change with it:

FigureTemplates.ScientificPaper(
    ax => ax
        .Plot(t, y, s => { s.Label = @"$e^{-0.15t}\cos(2t)$"; s.LineWidth = 1.2; })
        .SetXLabel("t (s)")
        .SetYLabel("Amplitude")
        .WithLegend(LegendPosition.UpperRight),
    title: "Damped Oscillation")
.Save("scientific.svg");

Sparkline dashboard

This template draws compact metric panels. Each metric is a NamedSample, a name and its values, and gets one row, named on its Y axis. There is no axes chrome:

FigureTemplates.SparklineDashboard(
    [
        new NamedSample("CPU %",    cpuData),
        new NamedSample("Memory %", memData),
        new NamedSample("Disk I/O", diskData),
    ],
    title: "Server Metrics — Last 60s")
.Save("sparklines.svg");

Hide all axes chrome

Use this for custom visualizations where you control everything:

Plt.Create()
    .AddSubPlot(1, 1, 1, ax => ax
        .HideAllAxes()  // no spines, ticks, or labels
        .Treemap(root, s => s.ShowLabels = true))
    .Save("bare_canvas.svg");

Fluent API reference

Method	Description
.WithTheme(Theme)	Apply a theme preset or custom theme
.WithBackground(Color)	Override figure background
.WithGrid(Func<GridStyle, GridStyle>)	Grid color, style, width, alpha
.ShowGrid(bool)	Show/hide grid
.WithSpines(Func<SpinesConfig, SpinesConfig>)	Spine visibility
.HideTopSpine()	Hide top spine
.HideRightSpine()	Hide right spine
.HideAllAxes()	Hide all chrome
.WithTightMargins()	Zero axis padding
.WithYTicksMirrored()	Y ticks on both sides
.WithXTicksMirrored()	X ticks on top and bottom
.WithMinorTicks(bool)	Show/hide minor ticks