customize ggplot2 axis labels with different colors

Question

I have a basic bar graph I've created from ggplot2. The y variable contains both positive and negative values and about half the vector of values are negative. I would like to customize the axis labels such that when the y value of that corresponding x factor is a negative, its label is red. Here's a reproducible example:

#Create data
x <- c("a","b","c","d","e","f")
y <- c("10", "9","-10","11","-3","-15")
data <- data.frame(x, y)
data$y <- as.numeric(as.character(data$y))

data$category <- ifelse(as.numeric(data$y)<0, 0, 1)
data$category <- as.factor(data$category)

#Graph
library(cowplot) #theme
library(ggplot2)

ggplot(data, aes(x=x, y=y)) + 
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill=category)) +
  theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 45, hjust = 1)) +
  theme(axis.text.x = element_text(colour = "black"))

What I need is a way to change the label colors of "c", "e", and "f" to the color of my choosing. I tried toggling theme(aes(axis.text.x=element_text(colour=Air_pricier))) but that produced an error.

Answer 1

An alternative is to create the labels as a separate plot object and use a package such as cowplot or patchwork to combine them.

#Create data
x <- c("a","b","c","d","e","f")
y <- c("10", "9","-10","11","-3","-15")
data <- data.frame(x, y)
data$y <- as.numeric(as.character(data$y))

data$category <- ifelse(as.numeric(data$y)<0, 0, 1)
data$category <- as.factor(data$category)

# Base plot
library(ggplot2)

pl_base <-
  data |>
  ggplot(aes(x = x))

# Graph
pl_points <-
  pl_base +
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(y = y, fill = category)) +
  theme(plot.margin = unit(c(0,0,0,0), "lines"),
        axis.title.x = element_blank(),
        axis.text.x = element_blank())

# x axis labels
pl_xlab <- pl_base +
  geom_text(aes(label = x, color = category), y = 0, size = 3) +
  scale_y_continuous(expand = c(0, 0), limits = c(0, 0)) +
  #guides(color = "none") + # uncomment to remove the extra legend
  theme_void()

# Combine with patchwork
library(patchwork)
pl_final <-
  pl_points +
  pl_xlab +
  plot_layout(ncol = 1,
              heights = c(NA, 0.07),
              guides = "collect")

# Combine with cowplot
library(cowplot)
pl_final <-
  plot_grid(pl_points,
            pl_xlab,
            ncol = 1,
            align = "hv",
            axis = "b",
            rel_heights = c(1, 0.07))

pl_final

This is very flexible but it can be difficult to position the labels correctly when changing the width/height of the final plot output.

Answer 2

Building on a-s-k's answer I put this in a more flexible form using glue templates and a discrete scale. With this option you don't have to change your data but just define a labeler in the scale that does everything for you, this is handy if you want to color the x-axis in many similar plots with different data.

(In the case of the original question the color depends on more of the data, than just the x-values, but I guess this could still be handy for some users.)

library(ggtext)
library(tidyverse)
library(glue)

#Create data
x <- c("a","b","c","d","e","f")
y <- c("10", "9","-10","11","-3","-15")
data <- data.frame(x, y)
data$y <- as.numeric(as.character(data$y))

data$category <- ifelse(as.numeric(data$y)<0, 0, 1)
data$category <- as.factor(data$category)

# create the labels 
my_labels <- glue_data(
  data, 
  "<span style='color: {if_else(category==0, 'red', 'blue')}'>{x}</span>"
  )
names(my_labels) <- data$x

# plot as you normally would
# use element_markdown as axis.text.x
# and the labels defined before as labels in a discrete scale
ggplot(data, aes(x=x, y=y)) + 
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill=category)) +
  theme(
    axis.text.x = element_markdown(angle = 45, hjust = 1)
  ) + 
  scale_x_discrete(labels=my_labels)

Answer 3

I, too, get the warning message mentioned in @Mark Neal's comment; it makes me nervous. Here's an alternative approach with the ggtext package. You can wrap the categories for the x-axis in <span>s and specify the color you want, and then use element_markdown in the theme:

library(ggtext)
library(tidyverse)

data %>%
  mutate(x.label = paste("<span style = 'color: ",
                         ifelse(y > 0, "black", "red"),
                         ";'>",
                         x,
                         "</span>", sep = ""),
         x.label = fct_reorder(x.label, as.character(x))) %>%
  ggplot(aes(x=x.label, y=y)) + 
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill=category)) +
  theme(axis.text.x = element_markdown(angle = 45, hjust = 1))

Answer 4

You can provide a vector of colors to the axis.text.x option of theme():

a <- ifelse(data$category == 0, "red", "blue")

ggplot(data, aes(x = x, y = y)) + 
    geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill = category)) +
    theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 45, hjust = 1, colour = a))