Can a gray carry one dilute gene but look like a normal gray? I understand that a double dilute gene creates a cremello or perlino, but haven’t been able to understand what would happen if there’s only one.
Yep. The horse will start out looking palomino or whatever and will then grey. The end result will be your typical looking grey horse.
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Gray is totally separate from all dilution/modifier genes, whether it’s cream, dun, champagne, or pearl
Double dilute means cremello (double dilute chestnut), perlino (DD bay/brown), and smoky cream (DD black).
A single dilute creates palomino, buckskin/smoky brown, and smoky black, respectively.
Pearl is on the same location as cream and produces its own set of dilutions. Singly, it does nothing. But doubled it creates an interesting look, ie a double pearl chestnut looks apricot in color, which is why it was originally called the Apricot gene), and when combined with cream easily looks like a double cream.
Gray on top of 1 cream gene looks gray in the end, but the intermediary color can look very interesting. Palomino going gray, buckskin going gray, is pretty amazing.
But double cream + gray doesn’t look too interesting. The only difference is that double cream will give you pink skin.
Thank you! I have seen a buckskin going dapple gray, its absolutely stunning. That’s the only possibility that makes sense for this horse - an old mystery that’s always bugged me solved:)
Buckskin and palomino going gray are pretty stunning!
A neighbor of ours had a gray AQHA stallion. More than one person remarked about how that “white stud” could sire palomino and buckskin foals out of bay and chestnut mares. 
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