What Color Will My Goldendoodle Puppy Be?

It’s always fun to realize that your dog is pregnant and a litter of puppies are on their way. And the most exciting part is wondering: what will the Goldendoodle puppies look like?

Chocolate or simple brown is the most common Goldendoodle puppy color. However, Goldendoodles can be a variety of colors, including white, red, black, or a mixture that creates a unique color. What color they will be highly depends on the coloring of the puppy’s parents.

The color of your Goldendoodle puppy is a more complicated question, but if we take a closer look into the wide variety of colors your Goldendoodle puppy may be, the mystery of your Goldendoodle puppy may be a lot more fun to find out the day it arrives.

Types of Colors and Patterns

Goldendoodles are the offspring of a Golden Retriever and a Poodle, so depending on the color of the parents, you may get some fun varieties of color.

Goldendoodle Puppy Fur Colors:

• Chocolate/brown
• Black
• Cream
• Apricot
• Red
• Parti
• Phantom
• Grey
• Silver
• White
• Tan
• Black and White
• Blue

There are many different colors available for Goldendoodles, and if you continue to breed Goldendoodles with other Goldendoodles over generations, you can get even more beautiful and rare colors that come from the recessive traits that have never made a complete appearance before, because of the fifty-fifty split between the original Poodle and Golden Retriever.

Each color is beautiful, and every person who looks for a Goldendoodle will not be disappointed, no matter the color.

Rare Goldendoodle Colors:

• Silver
• Phantom
• Grey
• Blue

As puppies mature into adults, the color of their fur will fade or get lighter. This comes from the Poodle side of the family, and a little bit on the Golden Retriever side.

There will be some areas where they hold their color, like behind the ears or on their face, but in general, the color of the fur on Goldendoodles will lighten over time.

If you are particular about a certain color of your Goldendoodle, there are a few ways to make sure that you can get what you want. One way is to go to a dog breeder and have them do the breeding for you.

When you search for a dog breeder, make sure they know what they are doing. They will help you successfully get the color of Goldendoodle you desire.

If you have two mating Goldendoodles, be warned that these litters can be unpredictable in color. But that makes it more fun, right?

Genetics of Parents

This is the fun part. Science!

Poodles have more solid colors than Golden Retrievers. Poodles have colors of fur that are:

• Black
• White
• Red
• Grey
• Brown

Golden Retrievers have a spectrum-like variety of a certain color, and these can be:

• Brown
• Dark golden
• Light golden
• Golden
• Cream

Add a Poodle to a Golden Retriever, and voila! An infinite number of colors for the Goldendoodle puppies! There are many different possibilities that your resulting Goldendoodle puppy could be, and if you know the parents, you could probably make a good educated guess on what your puppy will look like.

For example, if one parent is brown and the other parent is black, most likely the puppy will be a really dark, chocolate brown or black. It really all depends on the genetics and which fur colors hold more dominance than the other. In some cases, the colors will turn out to be both brown and black, like phantom, or black and white.

Types of Fur

When you mate a Golden Retriever and a Poodle, usually there are three different types of fur.

• Curly
• Wavy
• Straight

The wavy coats, also known as fleece coats, are the most common type of coat for Goldendoodles and have the best fifty/fifty split between Poodles and Golden Retrievers.

This coat needs frequent brushing to prevent knots and tangles, and these coats are more often on the low-shedding side of the spectrum. This does not mean that a Goldendoodle that has a wavy coat will never shed, but they shed much less than their Golden Retriever parent.

The curly coats come from the Poodle side of the family tree, and you can tell very quickly when you have your puppy if the fur has more curl than not. This type of Goldendoodle fur is allergy-friendly, so they don’t often shed. These coats need frequent brushings as well.

Straight coats come more from the Golden Retriever side of the Goldendoodle. As you can imagine, these types of Goldendoodles shed a lot, so if you are allergic to dog hair, this would not be the type of Goldendoodle to have in your home, as you will be cleaning up a lot of fur.

When you breed a Goldendoodle with a Poodle, the fur will typically get curlier, just like the type and texture of a Poodle, and increasingly non-shedding. And the same idea will happen when you breed a Goldendoodle with a Golden Retriever, except the hair will be more straight, long, and will naturally shed a lot more.

When you breed a Goldendoodle with a Goldendoodle, the fur you get as a result depends on what gene the parents gave. If parent one gave a Poodle hair gene, and if parent two gave a Golden Retriever hair gene, then it still has the fifty/fifty split of genes between the Poodle and Golden Retriever.

However, if both Goldendoodle parents give one Poodle hair gene, the resulting fur will look a lot more like a Poodle’s, and the same idea will happen if both Goldendoodles give one Golden Retriever hair gene. The resulting puppy will have hair that looks more like a Golden Retriever than a Poodle.

Thinking about your future Goldendoodle puppy can be a lot of fun—you have the color you can think about, which the possibilities are endless, and even fur to guess between curly, wavy, and straight. And if you’re unsure about the parenting of your puppies, the mystery only proves to be more exciting!