Buckskin Coat Colours

Buckskin coat colours come in a glorious range of golds from cream right through to rich tan...

I have included photos of black buckskins (smoky or dilute black) here for convenience and comparitive purposes.

Shades of buckskin coat colours....

Cream buckskins

Cream working on a bay base coat creates the various shades known as buckskin.

The lightest shades are the cream buckskins. Cream buckskins range from off white through through to dark cream or a buff colour.

Standard buckskins

Standard or medium coloured buckskin. The standard buckskin can range in colour from light gold to a tan colour. They may or may not have dapples and they can also exhibit black hairs throughout the coat without penalty (unlike palominos).

The buckskin above exhibits counter shading (or false dun factors) - wither shadow, ear edging and a dorsal stripe.

Gold buckskins

The gold buckskin is a particularly attractive shade of buckskin and is very popular because of the rich golden coat and striking black points. The darker shades of gold buckskin can be difficult to distinguish from bay but a tell tale sign is the gold iridescence.

Burnt buckskins

Sometimes used interchangeably with brown buckskin, the burnt buckskin is more obviously a buckskin colour but has dark areas of black or sooty patching over the coat.

Brown buckskins (smoky brown / dilute brown)

Also called smoky brown or dilute brown, the brown buckskin is cream working on a brown base coat. As cream is unable to dilute black pigment, these horses retain the black pigment throughout their coat with their soft spots (normally red on a non-dilute) being diluted to varying shades of tan, buff or cream.

One tell tale sign of the brown buckskin, especially the darker ones, is in fact the tan or lighter coloured muzzle. As this is normally red on a brown horse it gets diluted by the cream. On the black buckskin this usually remains black.

Brown buckskins have often been mistaken for liver chestnut and it is easy to see why.

Black buckskins

This shade of buckskin is more commonly called smoky black or dilute black. Black buckskin is cream working on a black base coat. Most black buckskins can be identified visually via a few tell tale signs such as a diluted eye colour, cream hair in the ears and a gold tinge to the coat instead of the blue associated with the undiluted black.

DNA testing though is generally the most reliable way to pick a black buckskin.