When to use a horizontal bar chart or vertical?

[bauer24]

As the title suggests - I'm wondering when is best practice to use vertical bars versus horizontal? I can only think that when you have long category names then they are better off horizontal, so a horizontal bar chart is better. But are there any hard and fast rules I should follow?

 

[SydneyGeek]

Mostly personal taste, I guess. But 2 times when I would always use bar charts would be:

1. As you point out, categories with long titles.
2. 'Tornado plots' -- those ones which give age breakdowns on the Y axis vs gender on the X axis, for example.

Otherwise I tend to use column charts by default.

Denis

 

[Jon Peltier]

I use horizontal bar charts most of the time, mostly to make the labels easier to read. It also helps to sort the data from largest at the top to smallest at the bottom.

If you are plotting by time or date, use a column chart with horizontal time/date. In general, line charts are better than column charts for showing time series.

 

[bauer24]

cheers chaps. Wasn't sure if there was a long list of rules (like there are, for say, when to use pie charts, i.e. almost never). I'll stick to using horizontal bar charts only when the category name is fairly long or if a dashboard I'm building just needs a change to spice things up.

Interestingly, with the tornado plots, I think the comparison between male and female is easier when the bars are vertical, but they are good for showing a spread amongst the age groups.

 

[Jon Peltier]

With the tornado charts, I think putting one class to the left and the other to the right makes them much harder to compare. Another example of people doing what's familiar, not what makes sense.