How can I change the gridline color without changing the tick and tick label colors in MATLAB?

When I execute the following lines of code:

h= plot(rand(1, 100));
grid on
set(gca, 'XColor', 'r')

the color of the X-axis gridlines, X tick-marks and X tick-labels all become red.

I would like to selectively change the color of the gridlines alone, without changing the color of the X tick-marks and X tick-labels.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The gridline color cannot be changed without affecting the tick-mark and tick-label colors in MATLAB prior to R2014b .

*In MATLAB R2014a and prior *you can work around this issue by plotting lines of the desired color on top of your figure using PLOT. The following example demostrates this approach:

h= plot(rand(1, 100));
hold on
grid on
% Obtain the tick mark locations
xtick = get(gca,'XTick'); 
% Obtain the limits of the y axis
ylim = get(gca,'Ylim');
% Create line data
X = repmat(xtick,2,1);
Y = repmat(ylim',1,size(xtick,2));
% Plot line data
plot(X,Y,'r')

After executing the above code, the color of the X-axis gridlines remain red, whereas the X tick-marks and X tick-labels are black.

In MATLAB R2014b and later you can set the 'GridColor' property of the axes to a desired value:

grid on
ax = gca;

ax.GridColor = [0.1, 0.1, 0.1];  % [R, G, B]

Please refer to the following documentation link:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/matlab.graphics.axis.axes-properties.html#d120e55810

[Image Analyst]

PKP25A, see my solution below for R2014b and later.

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

To do it in R2014b and later, try this:

y = sin([1:40]/10);
plot(y, 'm*-');
grid on;
ax = gca % Get handle to current axes.
ax.XColor = 'r'; % Red
ax.YColor = 'b'; % Blue
ax.GridAlpha = 0.9;  % Make grid lines less transparent.
ax.GridColor = [0.1, 0.7, 0.2]; % Dark Green.

Answer 3

[Jos (10584)]

People might be interested in creating their own grid using my GRIDXY(https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/9973-gridxy) function I submitted many years ago to the File Exchange. An example:

gridxy(get(gca,'xtick'),get(gca,'ytick'),'color',[.6 .6 .6],'linewidth',1)

Answer 4

[Wagih Abu Rowin]

ax = gca; ax.GridLineStyle = '--'; ax.GridColor = [0.1, 0.1, 0.1]; grid on