The styling of matplotlib plots is highly configurable via parameter settings stored in the data structure matplotlib.mpl_params inside matplotlib (formerly called matplotlib.rcParams ).

mpl_params behaves similarly to a dictionary, i.e. it is a collection of key-value pairs, but it also has validation, meaning that the possible values associated to a given key may be restricted.

For a key key , querying mpl_params[key] returns the current value associated to the key key , while

mpl_params[key] = value