# Adding custom color scales to plots
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/adding-custom-color-scales-to-plots/106004
**Category:** Visualization
**Tags:** question, plotting
**Created:** [November 9, 2023, 5:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/adding-custom-color-scales-to-plots/106004 "2023-11-09T17:31:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jreaso](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jreaso)
#### Post date: [November 9, 2023, 5:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/adding-custom-color-scales-to-plots/106004/1 "2023-11-09T17:31:56Z")
I have a line plot simply constructed from a vector `x` and a vector `y`, I have then computed a `colors` vector which corresponds to each x value. I want to add a color scale of sorts below my plot (or on the plot but below the line) where the color aligns with the x values.
I came up with the solution to use a scatter plot
```julia
plot(x, y)
scatter!(x, fill(-0.5, length(x)), color=colors, label=false, marker=:rect, markersize=10)
```
On first inspection, this achieves what I want, but since the marker have significant width, the borders are off center and don’t align with the actual change in color. I tried to change the marker width but couldn’t figure out how.
What is the best way to do this?
_Edit: I found a solution I was happy with but would be interested to see if there is a nicer way to do this!_
---
### Author:  [@jreaso](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jreaso)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2023, 12:54am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/adding-custom-color-scales-to-plots/106004/2 "2023-11-10T00:54:33Z")
A solution I found acceptable is to use Shape to draw rectangles. Instead of using `scatter(...)`, I used:
```julia
for i in eachindex(x)
shape = Shape([x[i]-rw, x[i]-rw, x[i]-rw, x[i]-rw],
[0, -1, -1, 0])
plot!(shape, color=colors[i], linecolor=:transparent, label=false)
end
```
where `rw` is half the rectangle width, I actually found setting `rw` to be the full distance between `x` points to be best as when they perfectly aligned, I got a strange lines artifact. Of course, the `y` values of the rectangle should be adjusted, it worked for my purposes to but the rectangles between -1 and 0 vertically.