coord_flip: Cartesian coordinates with x and y flipped

In ggplot2: Create Elegant Data Visualisations Using the Grammar of Graphics

Cartesian coordinates with x and y flipped

Description

This function is superseded because in many cases, coord_flip() can easily be replaced by swapping the x and y aesthetics, or optionally setting the orientation argument in geom and stat layers.

coord_flip() is useful for geoms and statistics that do not support the orientation setting, and converting the display of y conditional on x, to x conditional on y.

Usage

coord_flip(xlim = NULL, ylim = NULL, expand = TRUE, clip = "on")

Arguments

xlim, ylim	Limits for the x and y axes.
expand	If TRUE, the default, adds a small expansion factor to the limits to ensure that data and axes don't overlap. If FALSE, limits are taken exactly from the data or xlim/ylim. Giving a logical vector will separately control the expansion for the four directions (top, left, bottom and right). The expand argument will be recycled to length 4 if necessary. Alternatively, can be a named logical vector to control a single direction, e.g. expand = c(bottom = FALSE).
clip	Should drawing be clipped to the extent of the plot panel? A setting of "on" (the default) means yes, and a setting of "off" means no. In most cases, the default of "on" should not be changed, as setting clip = "off" can cause unexpected results. It allows drawing of data points anywhere on the plot, including in the plot margins. If limits are set via xlim and ylim and some data points fall outside those limits, then those data points may show up in places such as the axes, the legend, the plot title, or the plot margins.

Details

Coordinate systems interact with many parts of the plotting system. You can expect the following for coord_flip():

• It does not change the facet order in facet_grid() or facet_wrap().

• The ⁠scale_x_*()⁠ functions apply to the vertical direction, whereas ⁠scale_y_*()⁠ functions apply to the horizontal direction. The same holds for the xlim and ylim arguments of coord_flip() and the xlim() and ylim() functions.

• The x-axis theme settings, such as axis.line.x apply to the horizontal direction. The y-axis theme settings, such as axis.text.y apply to the vertical direction.

Examples

# The preferred method of creating horizontal instead of vertical boxplots
ggplot(diamonds, aes(price, cut)) +
  geom_boxplot()

# Using `coord_flip()` to make the same plot
ggplot(diamonds, aes(cut, price)) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  coord_flip()

# With swapped aesthetics, the y-scale controls the left axis
ggplot(diamonds, aes(y = carat)) +
  geom_histogram() +
  scale_y_reverse()

# In `coord_flip()`, the x-scale controls the left axis
ggplot(diamonds, aes(carat)) +
  geom_histogram() +
  coord_flip() +
  scale_x_reverse()

# In line and area plots, swapped aesthetics require an explicit orientation
df <- data.frame(a = 1:5, b = (1:5) ^ 2)
ggplot(df, aes(b, a)) +
  geom_area(orientation = "y")

# The same plot with `coord_flip()`
ggplot(df, aes(a, b)) +
  geom_area() +
  coord_flip()

ggplot2 documentation built on Sept. 11, 2025, 9:10 a.m.