Change the position of the strip label in ggplot from the top to the bottom?

Question

I know this is not quite a data visualization issue, but the boss asked for it, so I need to figure out if it is possible.

http://groups.google.com/group/ggplot2/browse_thread/thread/a9a28e6b603d3e9d — apeescape, Jul 16 '10 at 03:47
ggplot2 is powerful but opinionated software- sometimes it is the ggplot way or no way at all. — Sharpie, Jul 18 '10 at 19:32
agree, need to do some modification using grid then, another steep learning curve again — lokheart, Jul 19 '10 at 05:34
See linked forum post in the comments in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10058839/how-to-display-strip-labels-below-the-plot , which gives the required grid hackery — Ben Bolker, May 09 '12 at 19:35
Using `gtable` functions, it is easy to move the strip. See [http://stackoverflow.com/.../how-to-display-strip-labels-below-the-plot-when-faceting/...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10058839/how-to-display-strip-labels-below-the-plot-when-faceting/29336396#29336396) or [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29008683/ggplot2-using-gtable-to-move-strip-labels-to-top-of-panel-for-facet-grid/29022188#29022188) or [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28853786/how-do-i-plot-charts-with-nested-categories-axes/28868462#28868462) — Sandy Muspratt, Mar 29 '15 at 23:59
And [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18065319/flip-facet-label-and-x-axis-with-ggplot2?lq=1) — Sandy Muspratt, Mar 30 '15 at 02:51
Could you please un-accept the accepted answer? It’s no longer correct, yet this answer is the top hit when googling for the question. — Konrad Rudolph, Apr 14 '17 at 14:07

score 133 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 07 '18 at 08:23

133

An answer for those searching in 2016.

As of ggplot2 2.0, the switch argument will do this for facet_grid or facet_wrap:

By default, the labels are displayed on the top and right of the plot. If "x", the top labels will be displayed to the bottom. If "y", the right-hand side labels will be displayed to the left. Can also be set to "both".

ggplot(...) + ... + facet_grid(facets, switch="both")

As of ggplot2 2.2.0,

Strips can now be freely positioned in facet_wrap() using the strip.position argument (deprecates switch).

Current docs, are still at 2.1, but strip.position is documented on the dev docs.

By default, the labels are displayed on the top of the plot. Using strip.position it is possible to place the labels on either of the four sides by setting strip.position = c("top", "bottom", "left", "right")

ggplot(...) + ... + facet_wrap(facets, strip.position="right")

edited Feb 07 '18 at 08:23

Blundering Ecologist

1,199
2
14
38

answered Dec 01 '16 at 17:47

Dave

2,396
2
22
25

12

2020 update - ggplot 3.3 - `facet_grid` [still uses](https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/reference/facet_grid.html) `switch` with arguments of `x`, `y` or `both`. – nniloc May 21 '20 at 16:49
The link for `strip.position` is broken – Julien Sep 21 '22 at 12:19
Now (with version 3.4.2), options are `switch = ` to "both", "x", or "y" – jgarces May 19 '23 at 11:28

score 36 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 01 '20 at 13:18

you can now use facet_wrap(~var, strip.position = "bottom"), though for some reason this results in the labels being located above the axis tick mark labels, rather than below (which I think would make more sense), as you can see from my screenshot of a small portion of my graph

screenshot of graph

If you want to have the label below, you have do to this

ggplot(zzz, aes(x = c1, y = c2)) +
  facet_wrap(~ gp, scales = "free", nrow = 3, strip.position = "bottom") +
  geom_point() +
  theme(
    aspect.ratio = 1,
    strip.background = element_blank(),
    strip.placement = "outside"
  )

As seen here: https://github.com/tidyverse/ggplot2/issues/2622

Change the position of the strip label in ggplot from the top to the bottom?

2 Answers2

Linked

Related