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Labradoodle Coat Colors

The Australian Labradoodle comes in a variety of colors and patterns. Each combination is beautiful in its unique expression. Lighting can change the colors, with summer sun often causing the outer coat to highlight in lighter shades. Silvering or graying may give the coat a distinctive look. Coats often have a slight to dramatic amount of softening of color over the years.

Despite all the stunning medleys, there are four basic colorations: black, chocolate, caramel (yellow with chocolate pigment) and cream/red (yellow with black pigment).

Black Pigment Colors:

All dogs in this category have dark brown eyes, black noses, gums and paw pads. Black and cream/red are the colors in this category and appear with a variety of beautifully individual shades and highlights. The descriptions may range in name from black, blue, or silver to cream, apricot, gold or red.

Black Fleece

A beautiful ebony throughout flleece. Some blacks can have a bluish hue to their coat that is seen in certain lights and apparent close to the skin. Silvering can appear as the dog ages, ranging from highlights of silver to a solid silver or charcoal.

Black
Cream Fleece

Cream is the lightest of this hue, and colors of cream, apricot, gold and red are found under the gene called yellow. The amount of cream fleece mixed into the coat can lighten it from a dark apricot to creamy apricot and even to a solid cream. 

Cream
Red Fleece

Red is the darkest of this hue. It is a rich, deep coloration that can take on the richness of gold in certain lights.

Red

Chocolate Pigment Colors:

All dogs in this category have brown noses and lighter, usually hazel, eyes and brown paw pads. Chocolate and caramel are the two basic colors in this category.

Intensity of the hue in chocolate and caramel can range from a dark to light. Puppies coats may start out darker in tone, then soften in time with hues of cream. Color names for chocolate range from cafe, milk chocolate, and latte to lavender and parchment. The caramel coloration ranges from light to a dark rich shading of the yellow gene.

Chocolate Fleece

Intensity of the hue in the chocolate coat can range from  dark to milk chocolate or cafe, and sometimes highlights abound.

Caramel Fleece

The deepest caramel cast is almost red. Differing amounts of cream saturation create caramel shades that can be uniform to light blushes of caramel color throughout the coat, from dark to light. Shades of gold are sometimes visible, with the lightest shades of caramel appearing  nearly white.

Lavender Fleece

Lavender or parchment colors appear in shades ranging from an aged yellowed piece of paper to a soft lilac or pink hue. They are uniquely beautiful in each dog.

Chocolate
Lavender
Caramel

Patterns

Solid

All one color

Solid
White Markings

Usually on chest, throat, top of head, muzzle, tips of paws and tail

White Marking
Phantom

Second color appears on the sides of the muzzle, on the throat/chest, above each eye, on all four legs and feet, and below the tail and can be very slight to prominent.

Sable

Born dark (black, tan or chocolate). Begins showing a lightening of undercoat with dark tips. After first grooming, dark tips are cut off. Some sables will keep some dark coloring, others will be the color of the lighter coat.

Merle - Not acceptable in the breed standard. Merle is listed for registration purposes only. All Merle pattern dogs must be registered as limited registration and may not be bred.

Phantom
Sable
Parti

Large areas of white with either chocolate  apricot, caramel, red, or black.

Parti
Brindle

Irregular streaks of color, darker than the base coat color. Also called "tiger striping.”

Brindle
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