How do I get the FaceColor of a histogram if set to ‘auto’?

h1 = histogram(data); get(h1, 'FaceColor');

Returns ‘auto’ and not the set color.

Answer 1

[Cindy Solomon]

Hi Gero,

The actual FaceColor is based on the 'ColorOrder' property of the axes, so if you assumed that the color order hasn't been changed and that the histogram was the first thing plotted on that axes, you could query the color from that. Histograms follow the same model as plot, wherein the first item plotted uses the first color on the ColorOrder, the second item uses the second color, etc. For example, if you knew that the histogram was the first item plotted, you could do something like:

colorList = get(gca,'ColorOrder');

histColor = colorList(1,:);

Could you please clarify why you would need to get the color this way? I work at MathWorks and would like to better understand your use-case so that I can pass your feedback to the developers.

Hope this helps!

[Gero Nootz]

Thanks Cindy,

I’m plotting more than one histogram on the same axis and later plot other things like lines and text which I would like to match in color to the histograms to which they belong.

Something like:

h2 = histogram(data)

plot(X, Y,'Color',h2.FaceColor)

text(…,'Color',h2.FaceColor)

This works nicely if I specify the color like so:

h2 = histogram(data,'FaceColor',[0.851 0.325 0.098])

plot(X, Y,'Color',h2.FaceColor2)

but does not work in the previous case.

[Walter Roberson]

Cindy, is the implication that if you change order of Children in the axes, that the histogram might change color?