---
name: Brushing
slug: brushing
category: interaction
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-26T00:00:00.000Z
definition: Dragging a selection across one chart to highlight the same records
  in every linked view.
aliases:
  - name: brushing and linking
    source: community
  - name: brush selection
    source: community
  - name: linked highlighting
    source: community
  - name: crossfilter
    source: community
tags:
  - canvas
  - dataviz
  - dragging
  - selection
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - range-select
    - lasso-selection
    - drag-to-create
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - small-multiples
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "Wikipedia: Brushing and linking"
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushing_and_linking
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: coordinated views should answer a selection made in any one of them
---

Brushing is two moves welded together. Drag a rectangle across one [chart](/chart) and it
marks a range rather than a set of objects: every record whose values fall inside it, named
by the numbers on the edges instead of by identity. Then the linking half fires, and every
other view of the same data repaints to show that same subset, so a band drawn on a scatter
plot becomes a shorter bar in the chart beside it. Richard Becker and William Cleveland
formalised the technique at Bell Labs in the 1980s, brushing scatterplot matrices so that a
rectangle dragged over one panel lit the corresponding points in all the others. The full
name is still brushing and linking, because neither half does anything on its own: a brush
with nothing linked to it is a highlighter, and a linked view with nothing brushing it never
changes.

The word to hold it against is [lasso selection](/lasso-selection). A lasso selects objects
on one canvas, and what it produces is a set of things you are about to act on. A brush
selects a range, and what it produces is a filter every linked view answers to. That single
difference explains the rest of the behaviour: a lasso's outline dies with the gesture that
drew it, while a brush stays on screen afterwards, with handles to widen it and a body to
slide, because it is a standing query rather than a moment of pointing. [Range
select](/range-select) is the third neighbour and the flattest of the three, spanning a run
of an ordered list with Shift and a second click, which yields a set of rows again rather
than a condition on a dimension.

Most of the craft is in the edges. An empty brush should mean everything rather than
nothing, so a freshly loaded view starts at its full count and the reader is filtering down
rather than building up, and clearing therefore has to be its own control: a second drag
would be indistinguishable from the start of a new brush. Records outside the brush are
dimmed rather than deleted, because the shape the whole distribution made is the context
that makes the selection mean anything, and a linked view that empties out has thrown away
the comparison the reader was making. Update the linked views continuously through the drag
rather than on release, since the whole appeal is watching a second chart move while your
hand is still on the first one. And decide early whether a brush is one dimensional (a range
along an [axis](/axis), which is what most time series want) or two, because the second
handle set costs more than it usually returns.

Brushing is the interaction [small multiples](/small-multiples) were waiting for: once one
design is repeated across a dozen panels, a brush in any panel is a question asked of all of
them at once, which is exactly the coordinated-views idea that dashboards later sold under
the name crossfilter. The control panel version of the same job is a [faceted
filter](/faceted-filter), where the ranges are picked from checkboxes and sliders instead of
drawn, and it is worth shipping both: a brush is a drag over a picture, so it is unavailable
to anyone not using a pointer. Publish the brushed range as two numeric fields that read and
write the same state, announce the resulting count in a live region, and the chart becomes a
convenience rather than the only door.