How to Increase the Space Between the Bars in a Bar Plot in Ggplot2

How to increase the space between the bars in a bar plot in ggplot2?

You can always play with the width parameter, as shown below:

df <- data.frame(x=factor(LETTERS[1:4]), y=sample(1:100, 4))
library(ggplot2)
ggplot(data=df, aes(x=x, y=y, width=.5)) + 
  geom_bar(stat="identity", position="identity") +
  opts(title="width = .5") + labs(x="", y="") +
  theme_bw()

Compare with the following other settings for width:

So far, so good. Now, suppose we have two factors. In case you would like to play with evenly spaced juxtaposed bars (like when using space together with beside=TRUE in barplot()), it's not so easy using geom_bar(position="dodge"): you can change bar width, but not add space in between adjacent bars (and I didn't find a convenient solution on Google). I ended up with something like that:

df <- data.frame(g=gl(2, 1, labels=letters[1:2]), y=sample(1:100, 4))
x.seq <- c(1,2,4,5)
ggplot(data=transform(df, x=x.seq), aes(x=x, y=y, width=.85)) +
  geom_bar(stat="identity", aes(fill=g)) + labs(x="", y="") + 
  scale_x_discrete(breaks = NA) + 
  geom_text(aes(x=c(sum(x.seq[1:2])/2, sum(x.seq[3:4])/2), y=0, 
                label=c("X","Y")), vjust=1.2, size=8)

The vector used for the $x$-axis is "injected" in the data.frame, so that so you change the outer spacing if you want, while width allows to control for inner spacing. Labels for the $x$-axis might be enhanced by using scale_x_discrete().

How to increase the space between grouped bars in ggplot2?

What's about?
1. Use geom_col instead of geom_bar as recommended.
2. specify suitable position_dodge(0.5) and width=0.5 and 3. remove unnecessary code.

ggplot(d, aes(x=Measure, y=mean, fill=Condition)) + 
  geom_col(colour="black",width=0.5,    
           position=position_dodge(0.5)) +
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymin=mean-se, ymax=mean+se),
                position=position_dodge(0.5), width=.25)+
  scale_x_discrete(limits = c("Interest", "Value","Effort","Difficulty","Competence","JOL")) +
  scale_y_continuous(breaks=seq(0,7,by =1),limits = c(0,7), expand = c(0,0))+
  scale_fill_manual(values=c("#ffcc00ff","#ffffff"), name = "Condition") + 
  labs(x="", y = "Rating (0-7)")+
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(axis.line = element_line(color="black"),
        axis.ticks = element_line(color="black"),
        panel.border = element_blank())

Adding space between bars in ggplot2

Is this what you want?

hist + geom_bar(width=0.4, position = position_dodge(width=0.5))

• width in geom_bar determines the width of the bar.
• width in position_dodge determines the position of each bar.

Probably you can easily understand their behavior after you play with them for a while.

Increase space between bars in ggplot

You can adjust the width outside of the position_dodge as well (in geom_bar),

ggplot(data=df, aes(x=Gene, y=FC, fill=expt, group=expt)) +
  geom_bar(colour="black", stat="identity", position = position_dodge(width = 0.8), width=0.5) +
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymax = FC + se, ymin = FC, group=expt),
                position = position_dodge(width = 0.8), width = 0.25)

or

dodge <- position_dodge(width = 0.5)

ggplot(data=df, aes(x=Gene, y=FC, fill=expt, group=expt)) +
  geom_bar(colour="black", stat="identity", position=dodge, width=0.5) +
  geom_errorbar(aes(ymax = FC + se, ymin = FC, group=expt),
                position = dodge, width = 0.25)

ggplot2 : How to reduce the width AND the space between bars with geom_bar

I would adjust the plot's aspect ratio, and have ggplot automatically assign the right width for the bars and the gap between them:

  ggplot(iris, aes(Species, Petal.Length)) + 
      geom_bar(stat="summary", width=0.4) +
      theme(aspect.ratio = 2/1)

Produces this:

How Can I Increase Space Between Bars With ggplot?

That's a lot of bars. You can make the bars narrower by specifying their width inside geom_bar() (as a proportion, 1 is touching, 0.5 is equal amounts of bar and gap, the default is 0.9).

ggplot(G, aes(x = State, y = Score, fill = State)) +
  geom_bar(stat = "identity", position = "dodge", width = 0.8) + 
  scale_y_continuous(labels = scales::comma)

Also note that the position = "dodge" isn't doing anything in your example.

For a plot with that many bars, if you want them all labeled, I would suggest adding + coord_flip() to your plot - usually it's easier to have lots of vertical space than lots of horizontal space, and the long labels won't overlap. When you have over 50 bars, you're going to need a fair amount of space.

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