How to color entire background in ggplot2 when using coord_fixed

Question

When coord_fixed() is used with ggplot2, it does not appear to be possible to set the background color of the entire plot. Consider this simple example:

Answer 1

This will do what you want:

p2 <- p1 + theme(
  plot.background=element_rect(fill="green", color="green")
) + coord_fixed()
grid:::grid.rect(gp=gpar(fill="green", col="green"))
ggplot2:::print.ggplot(p2, newpage=FALSE)

First, we set the border and fill to green, then we plot a grid rectangle in the same color to fill the viewport, and finally we plot with ggplot2:::print setting the newpage parameter to false so that it overplots on top of our grid rectangle:

Note that the problem isn't with ggplot, but it's just that you are plotting into a viewport that is the wrong size. If you pre-shape your viewport to the correct aspect ratio, you won't need to worry about setting the viewport contents to green first.