The best way to think of the chocolate range of colours is to compare with coffee. Chocolate is a black coffee with the tiniest splash of milk. Add a little more milk and you get cafe - a milky chocolate colour. Add more milk again and you get lavender - multiple shades, some chocolate, bronzing and silvering. Add more milk again, to the point that there is hardly any coffee left, and you get parchment which is almost a rich tea biscuit colour. Chocolate, cafe, lavender and parchment are essentially different shades of the one colour and puppies can either darken or fade as they get older.
All puppies in the black range are born black. Some will remain jet black, whilst others will fade to become blue or silver. Blue is very close to black, but has a distinctive blue shimmer. Silver is considerably lighter and often progresses over time. Whether a black puppy will fade is impossible to say for certain, but puppies that will ultimately turn silver often have paler areas under their eyes and around their muzzle as puppies. Black blue and silver are essentially different shades of the same colour.
Believe it or not, chalk, cream, gold and red are technically different shades of the one colour! Chalk is the palest and is nearly white, cream is a little richer, gold is darker and richer again, and red is as dark as it gets within this colour range. Red puppies often fade to gold and gold puppies often fade to cream, but it is also possible for gold puppies to darken and become deep red. All dogs within this colour range have black noses.
The colour caramel is actually governed by nose pigmentation! Caramel is technically any red, gold, cream coloured dog with a rose coloured nose. We tend to refer to cream coloured coats with rose nose as "caramel" or "light/pale caramel" and gold and red coloured coats with rose noses as "dark caramel".
Whilst most Australian Labradoodles are solid colours, there are some very interesting colour and pattern combinations that are possible, particularly due to the breed's Poodle and Spaniel influences.
© Copyright of Lomond Hills Labradoodles
Lomond Hills Labradoodles is a trading name of LHL Limited, a company registered in Scotland
© Copyright of Lomond Hills Labradoodles
Lomond Hills Labradoodles is a trading name of LHL Limited, a company registered in Scotland
