Equine coat color

Basic coat colors

• Bay: Body color ranges from a light reddish-brown to rich chocolate brown with "black points". The main color variations are:
• * Dark Bay: a dark brown coat with black points, difficult to distinguish from seal brown. Sometimes also called "black bay"
• * Mahogany Bay: a dark red brown coat with black points
• * Blood Bay/Red Bay: a bright red chestnut coat with black points
• * Brown: The word "brown" is used by some breed registries to describe dark bays. There is a distinct allele that darkens a bay coat to seal brown, but it is not the cause of all forms of dark bay. Informally, "brown" is applied to many distinct coat colors. Most often, horses described by casual observers as "brown" are actually bay or chestnut. In the absence of DNA testing, chestnut and bay can be distinguished from each other by looking at the mane, tail and legs for the presence of black points.
• Chestnut: A red brown coat with no black. The mane and tail are the same shade of chestnut or lighter chestnut than the body coat. The main color variations are:
• * Liver Chestnut: very dark red chestnut coat. Sometimes a liver chestnut is also simply called "brown".
• * Sorrel: Reddish-tan coat, about the color of a new penny. The most common shade of chestnut.
• * Light Chestnut: seldom-used term for a pale chestnut coat, mane, and tail
• * Flaxen Chestnut: Any shade of chestnut, with a blond mane and tail
• Black: Black is relatively uncommon, though it is not "rare". There are two types of black, fading black and non-fading black. Most black horses will fade to a brownish color if the horse is exposed to sunlight regularly. Non-fading black is a blue-black shade that does not fade in the sun. Genetically, the two cannot yet be differentiated, and some claim the difference occurs due to management rather than genetics, though this claim is hotly disputed. Most black foals are usually born a mousy grey or dun color. As their foal coat begins to shed out, their black color will show through, though in some breeds black foals are born jet black. For a horse to be considered black, it must be completely black except for white markings. A sun-bleached black horse is still black, even though it may appear to be a dark bay or brown. A visible difference between a true black and a dark chestnut or bay is seen in the fine hairs around the eyes and muzzle; on a true black these hairs are black, even if the horse is sun-bleached, on other colors, they will be lighter.

Graying with age

• Steel Grey/Iron Grey: Usually a younger horse, an animal with white and dark hairs evenly intermixed over most of the body. Appears dark grey
• Dapple Grey: Grey coat with lighter rings of grey hairs, called dapples, scattered throughout.
• Fleabitten Grey: an otherwise fully white-haired horse with dark grey dots flecked throughout the coat.
• Rose Grey: A grey horse with a reddish or pinkish tinge to its coat. This color occurs in a horse born bay or chestnut while the young horse is "graying out".

  Lightened colors

• Buckskin: A bay horse with one copy of the cream gene, a dilution gene that "dilutes" or fades the coat color to a yellow, cream, or gold while keeping the black points.
• Champagne: Produced by a different dilution gene than the cream gene. It lightens both skin and hair, but creates a metallic gold coat color with mottled skin and light-colored eyes. Champagne horses are often confused with palomino, cremello, dun, or buckskins.
• Cream dilution, an incomplete dominant gene that produces a partially diluted coat color with one copy of the allele and a full dilution with two copies. Colors produced include Palomino, Buckskin, Perlino, Cremello and Smoky Cream or Smoky black.
• Cremello: A horse with a chestnut base coat and two cream genes that wash out almost all color until the horse is a pale cream or light tan color. Often called "white", they are not truly white horses, and they do not carry the white gene. A cremello usually has blue eyes.
• Dun: Yellowish or tan coat with primitive markings, sometimes called "dun factors": a darker-colored mane and tail, a dorsal stripe along the back and occasionally faint horizontal zebralike stripings on the upper legs and a possible transverse stripe across the withers. There are several variations of dun:
• * Grullo, Grulla, or Blue Dun: A horse with a black base color and the dun gene. Coat is a solid "mouse-colored" gray or silver with black or dark gray primitive markings.
• * Red Dun: A chestnut base coat with dun factors. Coat is usually pale yellow or tan with chestnut primitive markings.
• * "Bay Dun" or "Zebra dun" are terms sometimes used to describe the classic dun color of yellow or tan with black primitive markings, used when necessary to distinguish it from red duns or grullos.
• * "Buckskin dun" or "Yellow dun" describes a dun that also carries the cream gene dilution and has a coat of pale gold with a black mane, tail, legs and primitive markings.
• Mushroom dilutes red-based horses to a pale tan color.
• Palomino: chestnut horse that has one cream dilution gene that turns the horse to a golden, yellow, or tan shade with a flaxen or white mane and tail. Often cited as being a color "of twenty-two carat gold", palominos range in shades from extremely light, almost cremello, to deep chocolate, but always with a white or flaxen mane and tail.
• Pearl: Also called the "barlink factor", A dilution gene that when homozygous, lightens red coats to a uniform apricot color, often also resulting in horses with blue eyes. When combined with cream dilution, it may produce horses that appear to be cremello or perlino.
• Perlino: similar to a cremello, but is genetically a bay base coat with two dilute genes. Eyes are blue. Mane, tail and points are not black, but are usually darker than the body coat, generally a reddish or rust color, not to be confused with a red dun.
• Silver dapple: Caused by a dilution gene that only acts upon black hair pigment, it lightens black body hair to a chocolate brown and the mane and tail to silver. The gene may be carried but will not be visible on horses with a red base coat. Silver dapple horses may also be called Chocolate, Flax, or Taffy.
• Smoky black: A horse which visually appears to be either a black with a mildly bleached-out coat or a dull dark bay, but actually has a black base coat and one copy of the cream gene.
• Smoky Cream: Virtually indistinguishable from a cremello or perlino without DNA testing, a horse with a black base coat and two copies of the cream gene.

  White patterns

Leopard complex

• blanket: white over the hip that may extend from the tail to the base of the neck. The spots inside the blanket are the same color as the horse's base coat.
• varnish roan: a mix of body and white hairs that extends over the entire body—no relation to true roan.
• snowflake: white spots on a dark body. Typically the white spots increase in number and size as the horse ages.
• leopard: dark spots of varying sizes over a white body.
• few spot leopard: a nearly white horse from birth that retains color just above the hooves, the knees, "armpits", mane and tail, wind pipe, and face.
• frost: similar to varnish but the white hairs are limited to the back, loins, and neck.

  Pinto

• Piebald: a black-and-white spotting pattern. This is effectively pinto on top of black.
• Skewbald: a spotting pattern of white and any other color other than black, or a spotting pattern of white and two other colors, which may include black.. This is effectively pinto on top of bay, chestnut, or any other non-black color.

• Overo: Describes a group of spotting patterns genetically distinct from one another, characterized by sharp, irregular markings with a horizontal orientation, usually more dark than white. In some cases, the face is usually white, often with blue eyes. The white rarely crosses the back, and the lower legs are normally dark. Variations include "frame overo" and "splashed white". Sometimes Sabino is also classified in the overo family.
• Sabino: Often confused with roan or rabicano, a slight spotting pattern characterized by high white on legs, belly spots, white markings on the face extending past the eyes and/or patches of roaning patterns standing alone, or on the edges of white markings.
• Tobiano: Spotting pattern characterized by rounded markings with white legs and white across the back between the withers and the dock of the tail, usually arranged in a roughly vertical pattern and more white than dark, with the head usually dark and with markings like that of a normal horse. i.e. star, snip, strip, or blaze.
• Tovero: spotting pattern that is a mix of tobiano and overo coloration, such as blue eyes on a dark head. May also refer to horses with Tobiano coloring that carry a recessive overo gene.

  Roaning

• Rabicano: A roan-style effect that is caused by a genetic modifier that creates a mealy, splotchy, or roaning pattern on only part of the body, usually limited to the underside, flanks, legs, tail and head areas. Unlike a true roan, much of the body will not have white hairs intermingled with solid ones, nor are the legs or head significantly darker than the rest of the horse.
• Roan: a color pattern that causes white hairs to be evenly intermixed within the horse's body color. Roans are distinguishable from greys because roans typically do not change color in their lifetimes, unlike gray that gradually gets lighter as a horse ages. Roans also have heads that are either solid-colored or much darker than their body hair, and do not lighten. Variations of roan include:
• * Red Roan: A chestnut base coat with a roaning pattern with the mane and tail being the same red as the body. Red roan is sometimes called Strawberry Roan, and the term Red Roan is occasionally used to describe a Bay Roan.
• * Bay Roan: A Bay base coat with a roaning pattern. Bay roans are sometimes also called Red Roans.
• * Blue Roan: A black with a roaning pattern, not to be confused with a gray or a blue dun/grullo. A roan tends to have a darker head, while grays not only lighten with age, but their heads tend to lighten before the rest of their bodies. A blue roan has mixed-color hairs, a blue dun will usually be a solid color and have dun striping.

  White

White markings

Other colors and modifiers

• Brindle: One of the rarest colors in horses, possibly linked to chimerism. Characteristics are any base coat color with "zebralike" stripes, but the most common is a brown horse with faint yellowish markings. A heritable brindle pattern in a family of American Quarter Horses that has been named Brindle1 was identified and announced in late 2016.
• Sooty is a genetic modifier that causes dark hairs to be dispersed within the coat, darkening the whole coat.
• Pangaré is a modifier that is the opposite of sooty, it causes individual hairs to lighten, causing lightened areas on the muzzle, flank and belly of a horse.
• "Flaxen" is used only to describe the lightened mane and tail of a chestnut, and has been proposed as a genetic modifier, particularly when it appears to be a trait of certain breeds. However, the genetic mechanism of this process has yet to be identified.
• Dark areas sometimes called "bider markings" have been seen in Przewalski's horses and Mongolian horses. They appear to be a type of primitive marking.

Color breeds