diff --git a/.Rbuildignore b/.Rbuildignore
index 6f9cfe1..1de0d6a 100644
--- a/.Rbuildignore
+++ b/.Rbuildignore
@@ -12,3 +12,4 @@
 ^html$
 ^\.RData
 ^appveyor\.yml$
+^codecov\.yml$
diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index a65da46..fc75a58 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -12,19 +12,20 @@ License: MIT + file LICENSE
 BugReports: https://github.com/valentinitnelav/plotbiomes/issues
 Depends:
     R (>= 3.1)
-Imports: 
+Imports:
     data.table (>= 1.10.4-3),
     ggplot2 (>= 2.2.1), 
     mapview (>= 2.3.0), 
     sp (>= 1.2-7)
-Suggests: 
+Suggests:
     grImport,
     sf,
     knitr,
     raster, 
     roxygen2,
     plotly,
-    covr
+    covr,
+    testthat
 Encoding: UTF-8
 LazyData: true
 RoxygenNote: 6.0.1
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index e59b096..45eb2b3 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -3,6 +3,8 @@
 <!-- CI badges -->
 [![AppVeyor Build status](https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/status/jag1bo7jaao5jid3/branch/develop?svg=true)](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/valentinitnelav/plotbiomes/branch/develop)
 [![Travis Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/valentinitnelav/plotbiomes.svg?branch=develop)](https://travis-ci.org/valentinitnelav/plotbiomes)
+[![Coverage Status](https://img.shields.io/codecov/c/github/valentinitnelav/plotbiomes/master.svg)](https://codecov.io/github/valentinitnelav/plotbiomes?branch=master)
+
 <!--
 Fixing errors from Travis CI can be time consuming ... 
 I gave up since the effort to fix the errors is not worth the time!
diff --git a/codecov.yml b/codecov.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..69cb760
--- /dev/null
+++ b/codecov.yml
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+comment: false
diff --git a/tests/testthat.R b/tests/testthat.R
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c1f861
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/testthat.R
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+library(testthat)
+library(plotbiomes)
+
+test_check("plotbiomes")
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-base_plot.R b/tests/testthat/test-base_plot.R
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96389a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-base_plot.R
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+# test whittaker_base_plot()
+context('Whittaker base plot')
+
+library(ggplot2)
+
+test_plot <- whittaker_base_plot()
+
+
+
+test_that('function and arguments work correctly', {
+
+  expect_true(inherits(test_plot, 'ggplot'))
+
+  # colors are named properly when not user specified
+  colors <- gray(0:9 / 9)
+
+  expect_message(whittaker_base_plot(color_palette = colors),
+                 regexp = "Names for 'color_palette'")
+
+  tlc_legend <- whittaker_base_plot() +
+    theme(legend.position = c(0.2, 0.75),
+          panel.background = element_blank(),
+          panel.grid.major = element_line(gray(0.2)),
+          panel.border = element_rect(fill = NA))
+
+  expect_silent(tlc_legend)
+
+})
+
+