Colours and markings

Appaloosa

A breed with its own registry, defined by spotted coat patterns plus mottled skin, striped hooves and a visible white ring round the eye.

Bald face

White covering most of the front of the face and running out past the eyes. Blue eyes often come with it.

Bay

A brown body with black points — mane, tail and lower legs. The commonest colour in most breeds, and the baseline everything else is described against.

Black

Genuinely black all over, including the muzzle and flanks. Rarer than it looks, because sun-faded black gets called black and dark bay does too.

Blanket

An Appaloosa pattern where white covers the hips and loins only, with or without spots inside it, over an otherwise solid horse.

Blaze

A broad band of white down the face covering the width of the nasal bones, but not the whole front of the head.

Blue roan

Roan on a black base, which reads as steel blue at a distance. A dark head and dark legs on a pale body.

Buckskin

A golden or tan body with black points and no dorsal stripe. Palomino's cream gene acting on a bay rather than a chestnut.

Chestnut

A reddish coat with a mane and tail of the same shade or lighter, and no black anywhere on the legs.

Cremello

A cream-coloured horse with pink skin and blue eyes, from two copies of the cream gene on a chestnut base. Not white, and not albino.

Dapple

Rings of lighter and darker coat in a mottled pattern, most often seen on a grey partway through lightening, and not a colour of its own.

Dorsal stripe

The dark line running along the spine from mane to tail. One of the primitive markings, and the marker of a true dun.

Dun

A diluted coat carrying primitive markings — a dorsal stripe down the spine, and often bars on the legs. The stripe is what separates dun from buckskin.

Ermine spots

Small dark spots inside a white leg marking, usually around the coronet. They often show as a stripe in the hoof underneath.

Flaxen

A pale, near-white mane and tail on a chestnut body. Often mistaken for palomino, which needs a much lighter body than that.

Grey

A horse born any colour that lightens with age towards white. The skin stays dark, which is what tells grey from white.

Grulla

Dun acting on a black base: a mouse or slate grey body, dark head and legs, and a dorsal stripe. Pronounced roughly "grew-ya".

Leopard

The spotted pattern of dark egg-shaped spots over a white body, and the one most people picture when they hear Appaloosa.

Liver chestnut

A very dark chestnut, the colour of dried blood or old leather, still with no black points.

Overo

A pinto pattern where white spreads up from the belly in jagged patches and does not cross the back. The face is often mostly white.

Paint Horse

A breed with its own registry and stock-horse bloodline requirements, not simply a patterned horse. The pattern is pinto; the breed is Paint.

Palomino

A golden body with a white mane and tail. A colour, not a breed, though there is a colour registry for it too.

Perlino

The same double cream dilution as a cremello but on a bay base, so the mane and tail come out slightly rusty rather than cream.

Pinto

Any horse with large patches of white and another colour. A pattern description, which is why a pinto is not automatically a Paint.

Points

The mane, tail, lower legs and ear rims. Whether they are black is what separates a bay from a chestnut and a buckskin from a palomino.

Red roan

Roan on a chestnut or bay base, which comes out pink-grey. Called strawberry roan often enough that both names are in use.

Roan

White hairs mixed evenly through a coloured coat, with the head and legs staying dark. It does not lighten further with age the way grey does.

Sabino

A white pattern of roaned, ragged edges, high white legs and a splashy face. Mild versions get written off as ordinary markings.

Seal brown

Almost black, with lighter tan showing at the muzzle, flanks and under the elbows. Often registered as either black or dark bay.

Silver dapple

A dilution that lightens mane and tail to silver while leaving the body dark. Common in Icelandics and Shetlands, rare in stock breeds.

Snip

A small patch of white on the muzzle, between or below the nostrils, separate from any other face marking.

Sock

White on a leg reaching up to somewhere between the fetlock and halfway to the knee or hock. Longer than that and it is a stocking.

Sorrel

The western word for a chestnut, usually a lighter and redder one. Stock-horse registries use it; sport-horse ones mostly do not.

Star

Any white marking on the forehead, from a few hairs to a broad patch. Recorded on a horse's papers as one of its identifying marks.

Stocking

White on a leg reaching the knee or the hock. The whole lower leg, rather than the ankle a sock covers.

Stripe

A narrow line of white down the face, no wider than the nasal bones. Wider than that and it is a blaze.

Tobiano

A pinto pattern with white crossing the topline in rounded vertical patches, dark head, and usually four white legs.

Tovero

A horse showing both tobiano and overo patterning at once, which is why the two words stopped being enough on their own.

Varnish roan

An Appaloosa pattern that lightens over the years while the bony points stay dark. It keeps changing, unlike true roan.