How to remove space between axis and plot area in ggplot2

Problem

We want to remove the space between the axis and the plotting area. The space between the axis and the tick marks.

# data
set.seed(0)
the.df <- data.frame( x = rnorm(800, 50, 10), group = rep(letters[1:8], each = 100))

# Original plot
p <- ggplot(the.df) + 
  stat_density(aes(x = x, linetype = group), geom = "line", position = "identity") +
  xlim(10, 90) + ylim(0, 0.06) +
  scale_linetype_manual(values = c("11", "12", "13", "14", "21", "22", "23", "24")) +
  geom_segment(aes(x = 10, y = 0, xend = 90, yend = 0)) +
  geom_segment(aes(x = 10, y = 0, xend = 10, yend = 0.06))

Solution

Two alternatives

Scale continuous an expand

Instead of xlim(10, 90) + ylim(0, 0.06) we use a continous scale for both axis scale_x_continuous y scale_x_continuous, specifying expand = c(0, 0).

p <- ggplot(the.df) + 
  stat_density(aes(x = x, linetype = group), geom = "line", position = "identity") +
  scale_linetype_manual(values = c("11", "12", "13", "14", "21", "22", "23", "24")) +
  scale_x_continuous(limits=c(10, 90), expand = c(0, 0)) +
  scale_y_continuous(limits=c(0, 0.06), expand = c(0, 0)) +
  geom_segment(aes(x = 10, y = 0, xend = 90, yend = 0)) +
  geom_segment(aes(x = 10, y = 0, xend = 10, yend = 0.06))

coord_cartesian

We can user coord_cartesian instead of scale_x_continuous y scale_x_continuous.

p <- ggplot(the.df) + 
  stat_density(aes(x = x, linetype = group), geom = "line", position = "identity") +
  scale_linetype_manual(values = c("11", "12", "13", "14", "21", "22", "23", "24")) +
  geom_segment(aes(x = 10, y = 0, xend = 90, yend = 0)) +
  geom_segment(aes(x = 10, y = 0, xend = 10, yend = 0.06))+
  coord_cartesian(xlim = c(10, 90), ylim = c(0, .06))

Another example

uniq <- structure(list(year = c(1986L, 1987L, 1991L, 1992L, 1993L, 1994L, 1995L, 1996L, 1997L, 1998L, 1999L, 2000L, 2001L, 2002L, 2003L, 2004L, 2005L, 2006L, 2007L, 2008L, 2009L, 2010L, 2011L, 2012L, 2013L, 2014L, 1986L, 1987L, 1991L, 1992L, 1993L, 1994L, 1995L, 1996L, 1997L, 1998L, 1999L, 2000L, 2001L, 2002L, 2003L, 2004L, 2005L, 2006L, 2007L, 2008L, 2009L, 2010L, 2011L, 2012L, 2013L, 2014L, 1986L, 1987L, 1991L, 1992L, 1993L, 1994L, 1995L, 1996L, 1997L, 1998L, 1999L, 2000L, 2001L, 2002L, 2003L, 2004L, 2005L, 2006L, 2007L, 2008L, 2009L, 2010L, 2011L, 2012L, 2013L, 2014L), uniq.loc = structure(c(1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 1L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 2L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L, 3L), .Label = c("u.1", "u.2", "u.3"), class = "factor"), uniq.n = c(1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 4, 2, 16, 16, 10, 15, 14, 8, 12, 20, 11, 17, 30, 17, 21, 22, 19, 34, 44, 56, 11, 0, 0, 3, 3, 7, 17, 12, 21, 18, 10, 12, 9, 7, 11, 25, 14, 11, 17, 12, 24, 59, 17, 36, 50, 59, 12, 0, 0, 0, 1, 4, 6, 3, 3, 9, 3, 4, 2, 5, 2, 12, 6, 8, 8, 3, 2, 9, 5, 20, 7, 10, 8), uniq.p = c(100, 100, 25, 33.3, 31.2, 14.8, 11.8, 40, 37.2, 43.5, 48.4, 56, 40, 48, 35.1, 35.5, 47.2, 54.5, 53.1, 44.7, 24.4, 46.3, 37.8, 43.6, 44.8, 35.5, 0, 0, 75, 50, 43.8, 63, 70.6, 52.5, 41.9, 43.5, 38.7, 36, 35, 44, 43.9, 45.2, 30.6, 30.9, 37.5, 51.1, 65.6, 41.5, 40, 49.5, 47.2, 38.7, 0, 0, 0, 16.7, 25, 22.2, 17.6, 7.5, 20.9, 13, 12.9, 8, 25, 8, 21.1, 19.4, 22.2, 14.5, 9.4, 4.3, 10, 12.2, 22.2, 6.9, 8, 25.8)), .Names = c("year", "uniq.loc", "uniq.n", "uniq.p"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -78L))

Original plot

ggplot(data = uniq) + 
  geom_area(aes(x = year, y = uniq.p, fill = uniq.loc), stat = "identity", position = "stack") +
  scale_x_continuous(limits=c(1986,2014)) +
  scale_y_continuous(limits=c(0,101)) +
  theme_bw()

Plot without spaces

# Scale_x_continuous y expand = c(0, 0)
ggplot(data = uniq) + 
  geom_area(aes(x = year, y = uniq.p, fill = uniq.loc), stat = "identity", position = "stack") +
  scale_x_continuous(limits=c(1986,2014), expand = c(0, 0)) +
  scale_y_continuous(limits=c(0,101), expand = c(0, 0)) +
  theme_bw() + theme(panel.grid=element_blank(), panel.border=element_blank())

 # coord_cartesian
ggplot(data = uniq) +  
  geom_area(aes(x = year, y = uniq.p, fill = uniq.loc), stat = "identity", position = "stack") +  
  coord_cartesian(xlim = c(1986,2014), ylim = c(0,101))+
  theme_bw() + theme(panel.grid=element_blank(), panel.border=element_blank())

References

• How to remove extra space beyond xlim and ylim in ggplot?
• How to remove space between axis & area-plot in ggplot2?