Distinctly Paint or Pinto: The Most Popular Paint Horse Color Patterns

Horse watching is never boring. Aside from colors, there are various paint horse color patterns guaranteed to fascinate you. In this section, you’ll read about some of the most popular paint horse patterns and pinto horse patterns. Are you ready?

The Tobiano

1. The legs are white from the knees and hocks down.
2. The white pattern runs in a vertical direction.
3. The white patches are oval and soft-edged, not jagged.
4. The facial markings appear in the forms of a star, a blaze, a strip or a snip. Any “extreme” markings could mean that the horse has tobiano plus another color pattern gene.
5. There is a white patch that crosses the horse’s back, just between the tail dock and the withers (a ridge between shoulder blades).
6. There is a dark patch runs down the neck and chest area that looks like a shield.

The Overo

• Frame Overo

This paint horse color pattern is the most familiar and the most controversial among the three. You have most likely heard this pattern is often linked to the “lethal white” syndrome.



Area of Interest	Characteristic
Back	Often without white patches
Base color	Chestnut, bay, black or any solid color
Eyes	Usually blue
Head	Bald or white
Lower legs	Dark
Markings	Jagged
Tail	Dark, uni-colored
White patches	Irregular-shaped, oriented horizontally



When a frame overo mates with a horse devoid of spots, there’s a 50 percent chance that the offspring will have a spotted coat. Some solid-colored horses even produce spotted foals like magic! If you ask some researchers though, they will tell you this: Overos that are minimally expressed can resemble solid-colored horses.

Although the frame overo is clearly dominant, there are other genes that can alter it! One example is the tobiano gene, which can cover the frame overo gene.



• Splash Overo

From the most popular, get ready to meet the least common paint horse color pattern! A horse with this coat pattern is notoriously more inclined to deafness than any other horse type or breed you can think of. However, by its looks alone, the splash overo is a fun piece of art. It seems as if somebody dipped a solid-colored horse in white paint, creating a splashed-up look.



Area of Interest	Characteristic
Eyes	Usually blue
Head	White
Legs	White
Markings	Jagged
White patches	Sharp at points that merge with dark patches





• The Sabino

The classification of sabino is somewhat confusing. The American Paint Horse Association lists this paint horse color pattern as one of the three types of overo coloring. You see, in America, anything that isn’t tobiano is overo. Outside America however, the Spanish-speaking world will feed you with a different idea: that the sabino color pattern is synonymous to speckled roaning.

To set the record straight, know that in general terms (and more correctly), the sabino collectively refers to a pattern of white spots which you can find in specific parts of the horse’s body.


1. The white spots resemble stockings covering all feet.
2. The white patches are jagged, not rounded at the edges.
3. The head is dominantly white and may contain markings.
4. Any head markings may extend beyond the horse’s eyes.
5. The white-spot edges exhibit roaning.
6. The legs exhibit lacing or irregular-shaped marks.
7. The white patches usually cover the lower barrel.
8. The white patches may also be seen in the flanks.


Does the animal meet only some and not all of the descriptions in the checklist? That’s not a problem. Not all sabinos look the same. The minimal sabino sports very few white patches, while the sabino-white has a maxed-out immaculate look!. Some even appear completely covered with white hairs that you can no longer distinguish the spots from the base coat!

Did you know that some registries will refuse to register pinto and paint horses? What’s interesting is that if you get the animals DNA tested, many actually carry the sabino gene even if they don’t look the part. Some sabinos could sport the colors of a tobiano or an overo.

The sabino’s closest lookalike is the roan or the rabicano. The two are often mistaken for the other. There’s a separate section that you can read if you wish to follow this story.



More Genetic Mysteries

If you combine some of the overo paint horse color patterns, you could come up with new multi-colored patterns like the tovero, whose shades have their own traits! Genetic research about this phenomenon is on going, but these are what some scientists are saying:


• If a horse minimally expresses the splash and frame traits, you could easily mistake it for a solid-colored equine animal. These traits may be dominant, incompletely dominant or polygenic.


• The SB-1 gene appears to be responsible for the sabino pattern formation. Interestingly, there a few sabinos that test negative for the gene.


• You can’t find any DNA test that can successfully detect a single overo gene! What’s presently available is an allele testing of the frame overo pattern.


• The frame overo pattern and the “lethal white” syndrome appear to be connected. However, you can’t find any proof to confirm the association.


Caution: The overo paint horse color pattern is linked to several genes. So, unless there’s solid proof, it’s incorrect to cite the overo gene as the culprit of the “lethal white” syndrome. Many overo horses don’t have that “lethal white” gene at all.



Overo and the “Lethal White” Syndrome

You’ve read the term being mentioned several times. What’s the syndrome all about anyway? Actually, the “lethal white” syndrome is a fatal condition for horses, especially those who possess both copies of the gene. The typical patient is an albino foal: white skinned and red eyed, instead of blue. It’s not the lack of pigmentation that causes the death, but an undeveloped digestive track. All horses born with this dreaded syndrome die within 3 days or earlier. Many are euthanized.

What’s scary about the syndrome is that the horses who carry the trait (one copy of the gene) are often healthy! This is precisely why registries like the American Paint Horse Association require any horse with overo-pattern ancestry to undergo DNA testing before declaring the animal as fit for breeding. For strange unexplainable reasons, breeds that don’t sport the white pattern have never tested positive as carriers of the fatal gene. You’ll see that solid-colored horses share the same optimistic outlook.

With all that’s been said, don’t be afraid if you fancy owning an equine animal with a white coat or an overo paint horse color pattern. Some people call white horses “albino” but they’re not really referring to the true albino – the horse with lethal white coloration – but the (genetically) true white horse. Did you know that a white sabino that’s fully expressed could almost pass off as a true white horse? Or that cremellos are generally non-carriers of the lethal white syndrome allele?

Again, the only condition that you should be extra careful about is when you have a horse whose ancestors once carried the overo gene. Here’s some consolation: If the spotting pattern is either sabino or splash white overo, then you can rest a little better. There’s a huge possibility that such horse is safe from the “lethal white” syndrome. Don’t take your chances though. Don’t skip the DNA test!



The Tovero

What does the typical tovero look like?



1. The ears are surrounded with dark pigments, forming a bonnet or hat.
2. The chest or face has a marking resembling a dark shield with white outlines.
3. One eye or two are usually blue.
4. The mouth has a surrounding area of dark pigments. These pigments could form spots sideways in the face too.
5. The chest has spots that may reach the neck area.
6. The flank has multi-sized spots, but the smaller ones tend to linger in the loin area and across the barrel.
7. The tail has multi-sized spots.


A round or two of guessing will entertain you when you’re trying to make sense of the tovero. Although theoretically the pattern is supposed to be a mix of overo and tobiano coloration, in reality there are some markings that just don’t fit any mold!

The most exciting thing about owning and breeding paint horses, is the surprise paint horse color pattern you may find when the foal is born.



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