Illustration of Seaborn Palettes

Cassie Nutter
4 min readJan 16, 2021

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Have you ever made an error on purpose?

No, this isn’t a trick question.

Recently, I found myself running code that I knew wouldn’t work. I wanted that error code. Because within it contained valuable information:

The list of Seaborn palettes.

Once I had the list, that’s when the fun started. Copy and pasting all the different palettes into my graph! What does this do? What about that one?! How does this look on a scatterplot?

Having an image where the colors increase the visibility of the data is incredibly important.

“Applying color to different parts of your visualization lets you tell a more effective story, one that engages your audience at an emotional level and captures their attention quickly. Well-chosen colors reduce the time to insight for your viewers and helps them understand your message sooner and more easily.”

Forbes, March 2019

While it was fun seeing my visualizations in different colors, it was wasting a lot of time looking for a palette that would work.

So, to save myself some time (and you as well) I have created a bar graph, and mapped the different palettes onto it. Scroll down to see all the options:

As you can see, there are A LOT of options (eighty-eight to be exact). There is bound to be one that conveys the right message to your audience.

But wait, there’s more!

Maybe you found a color option that would work, but would be even better if the order the colors are in was reversed. To reverse the color order, add _r to the end of the palette name.

For example: the palette “winter” in its original order goes from blue to green. To switch the order where it starts green and goes to blue, simply type “palette= ‘winter_r’ into your code and VOILA!

Showing original order on first row, reverse order on second row

Please visit my GitHub where I have different ways of displaying the bar graphs and a PDF to keep handy on your computer.

If you still want to do it the old fashioned way and want to see all of the palettes in one place, you don’t need to create an error like I did. I’ve got them all right here for you.

‘Accent’, ‘Accent_r’, ‘Blues’, ‘Blues_r’, ‘BrBG’, ‘BrBG_r’, ‘BuGn’, ‘BuGn_r’, ‘BuPu’, ‘BuPu_r’, ‘CMRmap’, ‘CMRmap_r’, ‘Dark2’, ‘Dark2_r’, ‘GnBu’, ‘GnBu_r’, ‘Greens’, ‘Greens_r’, ‘Greys’, ‘Greys_r’, ‘OrRd’, ‘OrRd_r’, ‘Oranges’, ‘Oranges_r’, ‘PRGn’, ‘PRGn_r’, ‘Paired’, ‘Paired_r’, ‘Pastel1’, ‘Pastel1_r’, ‘Pastel2’, ‘Pastel2_r’, ‘PiYG’, ‘PiYG_r’, ‘PuBu’, ‘PuBuGn’, ‘PuBuGn_r’, ‘PuBu_r’, ‘PuOr’, ‘PuOr_r’, ‘PuRd’, ‘PuRd_r’, ‘Purples’, ‘Purples_r’, ‘RdBu’, ‘RdBu_r’, ‘RdGy’, ‘RdGy_r’, ‘RdPu’, ‘RdPu_r’, ‘RdYlBu’, ‘RdYlBu_r’, ‘RdYlGn’, ‘RdYlGn_r’, ‘Reds’, ‘Reds_r’, ‘Set1’, ‘Set1_r’, ‘Set2’, ‘Set2_r’, ‘Set3’, ‘Set3_r’, ‘Spectral’, ‘Spectral_r’, ‘Wistia’, ‘Wistia_r’, ‘YlGn’, ‘YlGnBu’, ‘YlGnBu_r’, ‘YlGn_r’, ‘YlOrBr’, ‘YlOrBr_r’, ‘YlOrRd’, ‘YlOrRd_r’, ‘afmhot’, ‘afmhot_r’, ‘autumn’, ‘autumn_r’, ‘binary’, ‘binary_r’, ‘bone’, ‘bone_r’, ‘brg’, ‘brg_r’, ‘bwr’, ‘bwr_r’, ‘cividis’, ‘cividis_r’, ‘cool’, ‘cool_r’, ‘coolwarm’, ‘coolwarm_r’, ‘copper’, ‘copper_r’, ‘crest’, ‘crest_r’, ‘cubehelix’, ‘cubehelix_r’, ‘flag’, ‘flag_r’, ‘flare’, ‘flare_r’, ‘gist_earth’, ‘gist_earth_r’, ‘gist_gray’, ‘gist_gray_r’, ‘gist_heat’, ‘gist_heat_r’, ‘gist_ncar’, ‘gist_ncar_r’, ‘gist_rainbow’, ‘gist_rainbow_r’, ‘gist_stern’, ‘gist_stern_r’, ‘gist_yarg’, ‘gist_yarg_r’, ‘gnuplot’, ‘gnuplot2’, ‘gnuplot2_r’, ‘gnuplot_r’, ‘gray’, ‘gray_r’, ‘hot’, ‘hot_r’, ‘hsv’, ‘hsv_r’, ‘icefire’, ‘icefire_r’, ‘inferno’, ‘inferno_r’, ‘jet’, ‘jet_r’, ‘magma’, ‘magma_r’, ‘mako’, ‘mako_r’, ‘nipy_spectral’, ‘nipy_spectral_r’, ‘ocean’, ‘ocean_r’, ‘pink’, ‘pink_r’, ‘plasma’, ‘plasma_r’, ‘prism’, ‘prism_r’, ‘rainbow’, ‘rainbow_r’, ‘rocket’, ‘rocket_r’, ‘seismic’, ‘seismic_r’, ‘spring’, ‘spring_r’, ‘summer’, ‘summer_r’, ‘tab10’, ‘tab10_r’, ‘tab20’, ‘tab20_r’, ‘tab20b’, ‘tab20b_r’, ‘tab20c’, ‘tab20c_r’, ‘terrain’, ‘terrain_r’, ‘turbo’, ‘turbo_r’, ‘twilight’, ‘twilight_r’, ‘twilight_shifted’, ‘twilight_shifted_r’, ‘viridis’, ‘viridis_r’, ‘vlag’, ‘vlag_r’, ‘winter’, ‘winter_r’

For more information on palette customization, visit seaborn’s website.

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Cassie Nutter

Aspiring Data Scientist, dog lover and running enthusiast