What color would look best?

[RideASelle]

I’m hoping COTH can help me with my dilemma I have a 17hh Selle Francais gelding named Henry. I’m currently bee-bopping around training level eventing. I’ve been wanting to change my colors for a while, but I can’t figure out what colors… He turns in to a bleached bay during the Summer, a blood bay through late Summer-early Fall, and a dark bay through the Winter and Spring. Here are some photos.

I couldn’t find a photo of his bleached coat, bus you get the gist of it. (Some of these photos are a little old, so excuse the position, riding, etc.) Currently, my colors are teal and silver/ whatever saddle pad that I can find. I’m thinking about changing it to navy, white, and black with an ecogold xc pad? Or maybe doing white with teal/ baby blue accents? I’m leaning towards more blue-ish colors, but open to any suggestions… Maybe black??

What do you guys think?

[Lilykoi]

Personally, I love red. I think it looks good as the main color or accent. Maybe you can do a black pad with red piping. Same with his ear bonnet. With a little luck you can find a polo with black and red. Red looks good with khaki too but not sure how you would do that.
By the way, your horse is quite handsome and you look great on him

[billiebob]

I think white as your main color and baby blue would look smashing. Or white with hunter green. I have a dark bay and while he can pull off basically any color, navy isn’t my favorite on him. Then again, I like a little flash! If I ever event with him, our colors will be black and red.

[RPM]

I think navy and royal blue look great on bays. Also hunter green.

Since you are already using silver and thinking navy and black, what about either navy and silver or black and silver? You shouldn’t have any trouble finding pads in navy or black. Or what about something like a royal blue pad with black trim and silver or white piping between the navy and black?

There is a lot of stuff out there in hunter-green-and-navy combined. Not very original, but that means it is easy to find.

I think teal looks better on chestnuts as it is a warm shade of blue and chestnuts are a warm shade of red, whereas I like cooler colors on bays. Gold for chestnuts, silver for bays.

Red is great, especially with Henry’s dark-bay seasonal coat, and even with blood bay.

Navy and white, and black and white, are classic color combinations and look sharp on any horse.

Hot pink looks good on bays, too, if you like it and Henry can pull it off. Not all guys can. And really bright yellow is cool too.

[DancingArabian]

Turquoise or a light blue paired with violet.

[Cabaret_SK]

I love royal blue on a blood bay, or burgundy.

[RideASelle]

Thanks everyone! I’ve tried red on him before and it doesn’t look BAD, but it doesn’t look great on him either.
I love RPM’s idea of black and silver! He looks really good in black, so I’ll try looking at those saddle pads and tack!
I also like the white with a baby blue/ turquoise trim.
I wish I could take saddle pads on trial so I didn’t have to spend a small fortune to figure out what works best.

[fivegaited]

I’m not sure about colors, but holy crap your horse is handsome!

[Lunatteo]

He is SUPER handsome!

Speaking from an artistic POV (I actually do illustration and color work for a living) I LOVE the teal with him (teal, not necessarily turquoise but that rich peacock blue/green sort of teal). His reddish brown coat would suggest going well with teal as well as anything in that range of blues and greens from a complementary stand point. As such navy and hunter green would go well as well.

White is fine if you’re a dressage rider but eventers love color so I could see white getting real boring real fast. It always is great for that classy moment but lets face it, colors are perdy!

Purples as an accent could work but be careful of getting into plum or maroon as it will be really close to his coat color and clash when he started brightening up in the summer (which is why red is so iffy) The orangey tones will pop into it and make it go all wonky.
And I’ve never liked baby blue with bays unless they were standard bays who stayed around that same tone. Even then it had to be paired with the right other colors or it ended up looking like a weird sort of white (also due to the complimentary color issue. It can be a blessing and a curse.)

I think you’d lose black on him when he’s darker. Black is sometimes worse to keep clean than white when you have a dark horse. But sometimes that’s all we can find of course. Though I have been overwhelmed going into tack shops lately at some of the colors! (for better or worse) Where was this stuff when I was growing up!?

And yes, I was the kid who dressed their white pony up in every. single. color. I got lucky. White and black are some of the easiest to colors dress

Seriously though… love the teal on him. I always hated teal because people assumed teal and turquoise were switchable and as a kid my white pony often wore turquoise. But on the right color horse without loud markings it looks so luxurious!

…I’ll go back to my crayons now >.>

[Lunatteo]

To add: you can’t take pads on trial but you can get free paint chips at a hardware store and take them to the barn to put on his coat. Also you or a friend could play with some paint programs on the computer and swap colors out.

[sabinomare]

I also vote for hunter green

[RPM]

If you have the PAINT app/program on your computer you can paste pictures of Henry there, complete with saddle pad, then change the colors of the pad using PAINT’S color tool. I’ve done that for trying halter colors on a chestnut.

[Dewey]

No one has suggested this, but I think gold looks great on bays.