Changing color to a ggplot, geom_bar containing only 1 variable

Question

I have this numeric variable 1:5, in my dataset D. I want to make a barplot, using the geom_bar function in ggplot, and change the colors of the bars, så each of the five bars have a different color.

I've tried to use the scale_fill_manual,

but that does not seem to work, and I've also tried to use fill inside my aes which neither works. I seems like the bars continues to be grey, no matter what I try.

My basic code to make the plot are:

ggplot(D, aes(x = I_imp)) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5),
                     labels = c("No Importance",
                                "Very Low",
                                "Somewhat Low",
                                "Somewhat High",
                                "Very High")) + geom_bar()

I want each of the 5 bars to be in different color. But how??

Thank you!

Answer 1

Add fill to your aesthetics:

ggplot(D, aes(x = I_imp, fill = I_imp))

This will change the filling color of the bars according to the variable, if you then want to manually determine the colors you can add + scale_fill_manual().

Answer 2

You can use the fill argument in geom_bar(), I use hex colors, you may want to google that if you are not familiar.

library(ggplot2)

D = data.frame(1:5)
colnames(D) <- "I_imp"

ggplot(D, aes(x = I_imp)) +
  scale_x_continuous(breaks = c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5),
                     labels = c("No Importance",
                                "Very Low",
                                "Somewhat Low",
                                "Somewhat High",
                                "Very High")) + 
  geom_bar(fill = c("#a83232", "#512fad", "#a8a82c", "#c21b9e", "#32a852"))