I make a graphical R
package which includes scatterplots as heatmaps. These plots show the data points of two variables on the x
and y
axis while colouring them with the values of a third variable. What colour scales are best for this purpose? The plot background is white.
What I've tried
For R
there is an omnipresent colour package called RColorBrewer
. After reading a few blogs about heatplots, I started experimenting with RColorBrewer
palettes but I find them just unsuitable in my situation, because they always have very light colours at some point (in case of sequential colours at the top of the scale and in case of diverging colours in the middle). See here two examples, first the sequential scale “Blues” and second the diverging scale “RdBu”:
The problem is obviously that this light colours seem almost invisible on a white background. Therefore, I tried a scale that goes from blue to red. See here:
My problem is that RColorBrewer
is so omnipresent for R
and it does not include any “pure” colour scales like from blue to red. Therefore, I feel like doing something wrong when I use my blue to red scale. Are there any clear objections why I should not use this? Are there other scales that are better in my context?