Is your plot colorblind friendly?

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You can skip to the bottom to just see the code.

Introduction

In a previous post I talked a lot about why ggplot2 has a terrible default color palette. In this post, I’ll show you how to use the colorBlindness package to quickly and easily determine if your particular color palette is equally garbage.

Packages

library(ggplot2) #graphics
library(ggplotify) # to convert to ggplot2
library(colorBlindness) #pretty self explanatory I'd say

Why colorBlindness

There are plenty of other packages that simulate colorblindness in R. colorBlindr, dichromat, and colorblindcheck come to mind. I’ve found that the only one that meets the following “make it easy” criteria is colorBlindness. Those criteria are:

Why ggplot2's default color palette is bad

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

You don’t want to make colorblind unfriendly garbage do you? No? Great, let me show you why ggplot2’s default color palette is exactly that, using the package colorBlindness. In fact, let me show you why it’s actually not a great palette for folks without colorblindness either. You can skip to the bottom to find the code I used to make this.

The Color Variants

The ggplot default color scheme does adapt colors as you add groups, becoming more and more rainbow. Pretty, right?

Ggplot2 on Data Visualizations in R

Is your plot colorblind friendly?

Introduction

Packages

Why colorBlindness

Why ggplot2's default color palette is bad

Introduction

The Color Variants