Do palominos have a "final colour", or does it evolve?

Does a palomino's colour stop changing at some age? If so, what age does it typically do that? If there is sooty in there, when would it typically make an appearance?

I'm in the process of buying a 15 month old AQHA filly and I'm just curious what how light or dark she may wind up being, and if the "sooty" appearance on her legs and hips is there to stay or not. I wasn't sure what age (if any) I might be able to safely assume her colour will stop changing (except summer/winter coats, of course). It really doesn't matter either way, I'm just killing time while I wait to go pick her up. :)

This is her at 3 days:



And yesterday, just under 15 months:


ETA: Yes, I know she's overweight, and we'll be taking care of that shortly. Also, she's totally clean in the 15 month photo, no dirt/mud.

With sooty involved a horse's color can change from season to season and year to year.

Ok :) Any thoughts on whether this horse has sooty? And her base colour should come to a standstill some point, shouldn't it?

Well being as she has dark areas when clean I would say there is some expression of sooty there.

I would say that her color will probably level out in a the next year or two, but it can change slightly with feed, stress, work, etc. Not extreme changes though.

Excellent, thank you :) Love your new avatar by the way..

Glad to be of help! We need more pics of your new girl when you get her home!

I love it too. It made me laugh when I first saw it.

I read that their final color is at age five and they keep getting darker until then. Although Hunter hasn't gotten much darker over the last few years.

This is him at 18 months when I rescued him


This is April 2010


This is last week at almost 4



Not a huge color change

To be honest, she looks like the sort of pally that is going to change from season to season - I bet she will be a pale cream in the winter, so you will have people calling her cremello or grey, and that colour in the summer.

I have a palomino very similar in color to yours OP. During the winter, we have people call her white. That said, they call all very pale horses white, but she definitely has a much lighter winter coat.
Do you plan on showing her? A way to get a deeper palomino color is to feed paprika, but it can test positive if you have drug testing at the shows you go to.

I don't plan on showing her, but I'm not at all concerned about deepening her colour, I was just curious what colour she would be. I'll be happy regardless. :) Now I'll be interested to see if she looks a lot lighter this winter though!

Hunter65, what a gorgeous boy!