Horse Coat Colors and Markings

Horses exhibit a diverse array of coat colors and distinctive markings, and a specialized vocabulary has evolved to describe them. In fact, one will often refer to a horse in the field by his or her coat color rather than by breed or by gender. Coat colors include:

• Appaloosa - a breed of horse with spots, any color mixed with white. There are different patterns: blanket- white blanket that typically starts around or behind withers with dark spots mostly over the hips, snowflake - solid with white spots over hips, and leopard - which is white with dark spots over all the coat. A true Appaloosa is actually a breed, not a color.
• Bay- Dark red to deep brown with black points.
• Black- There are two types of black, fading black and jet black. Ordinary black horses will fade to a rusty brownish color if the horse is exposed to sunlight on a regular basis. Jet black is a blue-black shade that is fadeproof. Black foals are usually born a mousy grey color. As their foal coat begins to shed out, their black color will show through,but jet black foals are born jet black. Usually for a horse to be considered black it must be completely black with no brown at all, only white markings.
• Brown -black with brown muzzle.
• Buckskin- A bay horse with a gene that 'dilutes' the coat colour to a yellow, cream, or gold while keeping the black points (mane, tail, ears, legs).
• Chestnut- A reddish/yellowish brown with no black points.
• Cremello - A chestnut horse with two dilute genes that washes out almost all colour. Often called pseudo albinos, they do not have pink eyes.
• Dun - Yellowish brown with a dorsal stripe along the back and occasionally zebra stripings on the legs.
• Fleabitten - not a color, but refers to usually red hairs flecked in the coat of a gray horse.
• Gray - a mixture white and any other colour hairs. Grey horses can be born any colour, and eventually most will turn white with age.
• Grullo- Dun with a black face. Dun factor on a black base coat.
• Pinto - A pinto is a multi colored horse with large patches of brown white and/or black and white. Piebald is black and white, while Skewbald is white and any other color except black. Specific patterns such as tobiano, overo, and tovero are placements of white on the body.
• Palomino - chesnut horse that has one dilute gene that turns the horse within 'three shades of a newly minted gold penny'. A white mane and tail with no more than 10% black hairs are required for registration. Palominos are a colour, and not a breed.
• Perlino - Exactly like a cremello but a bay horse with two dilute genes.
• Roan - a mixture of various colors. Red roans are chesnut and white hairs, blue roans are black/bay with white hairs. Roans are distiguishable from greys because roans typically do not change colour in their lifetimes.
• White - All white, may be the result of overlapping pinto, appaloosa, or sabino markings. Rarely there are true white horses born and are documented to have a dominant white gene. These horses have normal eye colour, and they stay white for life.

Markings include:

On the face:

• Star
• Snip
• Stripe
• Blaze
• White Face (sometimes called Bald Face)

On the legs:

• Coronet
• Pastern
• Sock
• Stocking

Elsewhere:

• Cowlicks (hair whorls)--can occur on any part of the animal, but are mainly seen on the forehead and neck.