# Surface plot for oriented surfaces **URL:** \ **Category:** Plotly Fundamentals\ **Created:** [April 2, 2016, 8:02pm UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/surface-plot-for-oriented-surfaces/733 "2016-04-02T20:02:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![oroszl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/dbc845/32.png) [@oroszl](https://community.plotly.com/u/oroszl)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2016, 8:02pm UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/surface-plot-for-oriented-surfaces/733/1 "2016-04-02T20:02:16Z")
Dear plot.ly community, Is there a way to create a surface plot with [oriented](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientability) surfaces ? That is is there a way to create a surface plot where one side of the surface is red and the other side is blue like this picture here: ![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/1X/bc964846a5738dbeffb9899f3abadac1d9b39e52.jpg) I spent a considerable time in combing the docs for the API-s as well and failed to find the appropriate options… ---
**Author:** ![oroszl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/dbc845/32.png) [@oroszl](https://community.plotly.com/u/oroszl)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 6:21am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/surface-plot-for-oriented-surfaces/733/3 "2016-04-04T06:21:15Z")
The question is not how to obtain a a surface plot in 3D which is , but how to tell plotly explicitly to color two sides of the surface with a different color. ---
**Author:** ![etienne](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/community.plotly.com/etienne/32/17_2.png) [@etienne](https://community.plotly.com/u/etienne)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 2:23pm UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/surface-plot-for-oriented-surfaces/733/4 "2016-04-04T14:23:25Z")
There is no way to explicitly set the color of two sides of a surface trace at the moment. You could try to play around with the [`lighting`](https://plot.ly/javascript/reference/#surface-lighting) attributes to make the side of the surface more distinguishable.