Can I see your favorite turnout for a bright bay horse? I’m at a total loss and don’t want to be boring!
Black and white is traditional and not boring 
and I think it still looks super correct.
If you want to do colors bright bay is actually richer and redder than Chestnut but definitely brown. Your options are wider than Chestnut. Blues greens beiges but also bright red can sometimes look ok.
Honestly I kind of liked the old black and white only thing in dressage as it removed the agony of fashion choice from the mix.
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Can we see pictures of your horse?!
Navy is always a safe bet in “brown” toned horses.
Sage or Marine can also look very pretty if you want to stand out some more.
Warmer colors can be done, but can be tricky to match to the undertones of your horse, so it’s hard to say without a picture.
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Royal blue looks stunning on bright bay. If you don’t want to go really bold, you could do black with royal blue piping/accents. Of course hunter green would be lovely too. The mare in my avatar is a very red chestnut and navy is always nice on her.
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That would be my recommendation too. My mare is a fairly bright bay tobiano and looks lovely in royal blue (or as a barnmate put it, “She looks expensive”). I would say avoid pink, a part leasor used that and I wasn’t a fan, especially beige-pink.
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I see from your posting history that you are also interested in cross country? Meaning if you event you need three total different set ups tack gear clothes for each competition. Well, some overlap.
You can go crazy wild colors in the cross country portion. Myself I’d be tempted to keep dressage simple just to reduce the fashion choices :).
She is very red in this photo. I’d go with the duller or darker blues and greens, or the tans and golds. I’ve got a Chestnut paint and our schooling gear is all in the blue and green range. Of course you need to consider your own colors too so if you want to coordinate saddle pad and jacket/top don’t pick a bad color for yourself (I look hideous in beige and gold though they are great colors for my horse).
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Personally, these are the color combos I’d be looking for in no particular order:
Blues: leaning towards greener shades and lower saturation.
Greens: spruce or sage, depending on how much you want to stand out.
Browns: red undertones, not yellow. Burnt orange/rust on the lighter end or “might-be-brown-might-be-burgundy-can’t-really-tell” on the darker end of the spectrum.
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Nice! I like most horses in darker or desaturated colors rather than bright primaries or jewel tones. Maybe a black or grey can carry off vivid colors
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I have always loved dark, saturated hunter green. Loden might also do
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Yes all the darker greens!
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I had a green Animo and sold it. I really regret it now! It would have been gorgeous. Maybe I’ll hunt for another green.
I ride a black horse and I don’t really like vivid tones on him either tbh.
As with most things in life, there are exceptions to the rule, but I usually find that super saturated/jewel tones are just too much going on. It tends to make people say “WOW look at her tack!” instead of “WOW look at her horse!” As my mom would always say, “You should be wearing the clothes - the clothes shouldn’t wear you”.
Of course, if you’re just schooling at home and you want to use some horrendous lime green tack because it makes you happy - go for it lol. At a show or a clinic though, I want my tack to make my horse look good and not the other way around
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Bright colors on cross country too!
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I’ve always loved a deep forest green & white on vivid bays…this may be my old school tendencies of pining for hours over color combos with my own blood bay when I was a kid & evented. At 15 I went strictly dressage (black & white was the “it” combo) & I was never to relent in over 30 years.
There’s something very elegant & confident in the classic pairing of forest & white against a “red” horse, even while there’s a risk of seeming antiquated
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Seeing the horse, I’d say she is more light bay than bright bay, but that could change with lighting, season, etc. But based on that photo,I think the dark green is best. You could go for tan breeches that play off the highlights in her mane and forelock.
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I’d do black with maybe a certain tone of gold points.
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