How do I change the polygon fill color and border color for SpatialPolygons objects?

Question

I have SpatialPolygons or SpatialPolygonsDataFrames which I'd like to plot. How do I change the color using the three plotting systems in R (base graphics, lattice graphics, and ggplot2)?

Example data:

library(sp)
Srs1 = Polygons(list(Polygon(cbind(c(2,4,4,1,2),c(2,3,5,4,2)))), "s1")
Srs2 = Polygons(list(Polygon(cbind(c(5,4,2,5),c(2,3,2,2)))), "s2")

SpDF <- SpatialPolygonsDataFrame( SpatialPolygons(list(Srs1,Srs2)), 
            data.frame( z=1:2, row.names=c("s1","s2") ) )
spplot(SpDF, zcol="z")

Answer 1

Base graphics (plot)

For base graphics, col= sets the fill and border= sets the border color.

plot(SpDF, col="red",border="green")

If you want a choropleth map, set col= to a vector of colors, one for each polygon's data value.

Lattice graphics (spplot)

Unlike base graphics, the col= option for lattice graphics controls the border color. For no border, set col=NA or col="transparent".

spplot(SpDF, zcol="z", col=NA)

For the polygon fill, set col.regions to a standard R color scheme (gray, rainbow.colors, topo.colors, etc.):

spplot(SpDF, zcol="z", col.regions=gray(seq(0,1,.01)))

ggplot2

As usual for ggplot2, you specify the levels and it picks the color scheme. You can override the scheme for the whole plot, however. Details to follow at some point.