Teddy Bear Dog Colors Explained
Every teddy bear dog color, from white and cream through gold, apricot, brown, black, sable, and parti, why so many pups fade paler as they grow, and what coat color actually tells you before you put money down.
The one fact that saves teddy bear dog buyers the most heartache is this: the dark puppy usually grows up pale. A near-black sable with a gold undercoat, the kind that looks like it will finish deep and smoky, very often clears to a soft gold by its first birthday. That is not a breeder shopping a different pup on you when the real one arrives. It is the Shih Tzu side doing what it does, lifting dark coats lighter as the dog matures, in a cross that is already half white. Understand that before you pick and most of the confusion around this breed’s color falls away.
I’ve fostered and trained little coated crosses like this for a long time, and the teddy bear dog is one of the ones people get most wrong on color. They fall for a shade in the litter photos that the dog simply won’t keep. So here is every teddy bear dog color you’re likely to meet, what each one actually looks like on a grown dog, and why the coat you carry home probably isn’t the coat you’ll have at two. If you’re already picking a name to match, there’s a whole batch sorted by coat color in the teddy bear dog names guide.
Where do teddy bear dog colors come from?
Start with the parents, because this cross is a tug-of-war between two very different coats. The Bichon Frise is a solid white breed, full stop, with maybe a faint buff or apricot shadow on the ears as a puppy. The Shih Tzu is the opposite, one of the most colorful small breeds there is, showing up in gold, red, brindle, black, liver, blue, and every kind of parti patch, and carrying a strong graying gene that lifts dark coats lighter as the dog matures. Cross the pure-white breed with the colorful, fade-prone one and you get litters all over the map, plenty of white and cream, a good share of gold and apricot, and the darker colors showing up but usually not staying dark. That Shih Tzu fade is the single most important thing to understand before you pick, so hold onto it.
What are the solid teddy bear dog colors?
Most teddy bear dogs are one main color, often with a little white on the chest, chin, or toes. Here’s what you’ll actually run into, roughly in order of how common it is.
White and cream
The most common look, and the one that reads most like the Bichon side. A true white teddy bear dog is a clean, bright white, sometimes with a faint cream cast on the ears or down the back. Cream is a half-step warmer, a soft off-white that reads as ivory, and it’s where a lot of gold and apricot puppies eventually land. On both, the thing that keeps the dog from looking like a blank cotton ball is the points: you want a dark nose, dark eye rims, and dark paw pads framing all that pale coat. The catch with white and cream is stains. A light face shows every rusty tear mark this breed is prone to, loud and clear, which is a grooming job, not a health one, and I walk through the fix in the grooming guide.
Gold and apricot
Gold is the warm honey-to-tan shade a huge number of teddy bear dogs wear, and apricot is its softer, more orange cousin. These are the colors most people picture when they hear “teddy bear,” because a round gold dog looks exactly like the stuffed toy. They’re also the colors most likely to fool you on how they’ll finish. A deep, rich gold puppy very often clears to a pale gold or straight-up cream by adulthood, keeping the warm tone only in the ears and maybe a saddle down the back. If a breeder shows you a fiery little pup and swears it’ll hold that color, ask to see the parents at two years old, not the littermates. The grown dogs tell you the truth the puppies can’t.
Brown and chocolate
Brown, also called chocolate or liver, is a warm milk-to-dark brown, and it’s less common in this cross than gold or cream. The tell is the nose. Instead of the black nose most teddy bear dogs wear, a true brown one has a brown or liver nose, brown eye rims, and often lighter amber or hazel eyes, all of it a set. It’s a pretty, unusual color, but it’s another fader. Brown coats tend to soften over the first couple of years toward a dusty, milky-coffee shade through the body, the “café au lait” look, while the ears hold their color longest. A deep chocolate puppy can grow into a much gentler mocha adult.
Black
Black is the rarest of the solids here, and a genuinely glossy black teddy bear dog is a striking, uncommon thing. The trouble is that jet black which stays jet black is hard to get in this cross. The Shih Tzu graying gene works against it and the white Bichon side does the black no favors, so a lot of black pups silver out or brown out as they grow, going a smoky charcoal or a dusty blue-grey, usually starting down the spine and behind the ears. If your heart is set on a coal-black adult, that’s the one color where you really need to see older dogs from the same line before you commit, because the puppy in front of you is the darkest that dog will ever be.
What is a sable teddy bear dog?
Sable is the one to really understand, because it changes more than any other color and it comes straight from the Shih Tzu side. A sable coat has hairs that are dark at the tip and lighter at the root, so the puppy looks like it’s wearing a darker overlay, often near-black or deep gold across the back and shoulders, sometimes with a dark mask on the face. It’s gorgeous on a puppy. But sable is a fade waiting to happen. As the dog grows and the coat gets clipped, those dark tips are cut and grow out, and the lighter root color takes over. That smoky sable puppy in the photo is very often a plain gold or cream adult with just a whisper of shading left on the ears. If you love the dramatic dark look, know going in that you’re usually falling for a stage, not a permanent color.
What is a parti teddy bear dog?
Parti means white plus a color in big, clear patches, so a parti teddy bear dog is at least half white with defined blocks of gold, brown, black, or sable. Because the Bichon brings so much white to the cross and the Shih Tzu brings the patterning, parti shows up fairly often here, more than it does in a lot of poodle mixes, and no two are marked alike. They photograph beautifully and people love them for it. Some parti pups also carry ticking, little flecks of color scattered through the white, that fills in as the dog matures. Same warning as everywhere else, though: the colored patches are the parts that fade, so a bold gold-and-white parti often softens into a cream-and-white one.
What about brindle and merle?
Brindle turns up now and then, straight from the Shih Tzu side, a base color streaked through with darker tiger-stripe bands. It’s a real, honest pattern in this cross, and like everything else with Shih Tzu blood, it usually softens with age as the coat clears.
Merle is a different story, and this is where you need to slow down. Merle is that marbled, mottled pattern with swirls of diluted color, often paired with a blue eye. Neither the Shih Tzu nor the Bichon Frise naturally carries the merle gene, so a “merle teddy bear dog” almost always means somebody crossed another breed in somewhere to get it. That matters, because merle carries real health risk when it doubles up, deafness and eye defects among them. If a breeder is advertising merle teddy bear dogs at a premium, slow way down and ask exactly where that pattern came from. Rare doesn’t mean better here. It usually means something got added that you weren’t told about.
| Puppy color | Often finishes as | Tell to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Sable (dark-tipped) | Gold or cream, faint shading | Pale roots under the dark tips |
| Deep gold / apricot | Pale gold or cream | Warmth washing out of the body |
| Black | Charcoal, blue-grey, or silver | Silvery roots showing at the part |
| Brown / chocolate | Café au lait (milky brown) | Body lightening, ears holding color |
| White / cream | Stays put | Rusty tear staining, not fading |
Do teddy bear dog colors change with age?
Usually, yes, and this is the single thing I wish more first-time buyers understood. Teddy bear dogs fade. The Shih Tzu side hands down a graying gene, and in a cross that’s already half white, it works overtime. That dark sable puppy has a strong chance of clearing to gold or cream over the first year or two. Black often lifts to a smoky charcoal or true silver, especially down the spine and over the shoulders. Brown softens to café au lait. Gold pales out. About the only colors that hold are white and cream, because there’s not much left for them to fade to.
The clearing usually shows first at the roots. Part the coat over a dark puppy’s back, and if you see pale or silvery hair at the base while the tips are still dark, that dog is lightening, guaranteed. It’s the same trick on a sable, a black, or a deep gold. So if you’re falling for a specific shade, understand you may be falling for a temporary one. The build of the dog, the coat texture, the size, and the temperament all hold. For how big the finished dog gets regardless of color, I break it down in the teddy bear dog size guide. The exact color often doesn’t hold at all.
Does a teddy bear dog’s color affect its health or personality?
For temperament, no. Flat no. A black teddy bear dog is not calmer than a gold one, a white one is not more high-strung, none of it holds up. This breed’s personality, the velcro attachment, the sweetness, the alert little bark, comes from genetics and from how you raise and socialize the pup, not from the coat. Anybody telling you a color “tends to be” more of anything is handing you a sales pitch.
On health, I want to knock down one specific worry, because I hear it with every white breed. In some dogs, white coats are tied to deafness, think of certain Dalmatians or double-merle dogs, where the white comes from genes that also affect the ears and eyes. A teddy bear dog’s white is not that kind of white. It comes from the ordinary Bichon white, which doesn’t carry that deafness link, so a white teddy bear dog is no more likely to be deaf than any other. The one place color genuinely intersects with anything is cosmetic. Pale coats show tear stains, that rusty streak under the eyes, far more than dark ones. It’s the same staining on every teddy bear dog. It just hides on a brown dog and screams on a white one.
How should color factor into picking a puppy?
Here’s my honest advice after doing this a long time. Pick the dog, not the color. Meet the litter, sit on the floor, and watch which pup comes to you, which one’s pushy, which one climbs into your lap and settles. That eight-week temperament read is what you’ll live with every day for the next fifteen years. The color is the one thing on that puppy almost guaranteed to change, so making it your top filter is backwards.
Two things to refuse to pay extra for. One is a “rare” color like a supposed permanent black, a true red, or a merle, because black and dark shades are mostly on their way to fading anyway, and merle shouldn’t be in this breed at all. The other is the word “teacup” stapled to a color to justify the price. Teacup isn’t a color or a type, it’s a marketing label for a dangerously undersized dog. Judge the breeder instead, and whether both parents were health tested. A good cream teddy bear dog from careful, tested parents beats a flashy one from a color-chaser every time.
Whatever shade you land on, the coat needs the same work, brushing down to the skin a few times a week and staying ahead of the tear stains, which I lay out in the teddy bear dog grooming guide. For how big the dog actually gets, see the size guide, and start with the full teddy bear dog breed guide for temperament and whether the breed fits your home. If you’re comparing the fluffy crosses on looks, the Mal-Shi shares the same Shih Tzu parent and fades much the same way, and the rest of the field is on the designer crosses page.
What is the most common teddy bear dog color?
White, cream, and gold are the most common, because the Bichon parent is white and the Shih Tzu side leans warm and fade-prone. Gold and apricot are the most requested, though many lighten to cream as they grow. Brown, black, sable, and parti show up less often.
Will my teddy bear dog puppy's color change as it grows?
Usually yes. The Shih Tzu side carries a graying gene, so a dark sable or deep gold pup often clears toward cream, black lifts to charcoal or silver, and brown softens to a milky café au lait. White and cream are about the only colors that stay put.
What is a sable teddy bear dog?
Sable is a coat where each hair is dark at the tip and lighter at the root, so the puppy looks like it has a darker overlay. It comes from the Shih Tzu parent and fades hard, since clipping and growth remove the dark tips. Most sable puppies finish gold or cream.
Are merle teddy bear dogs real?
Merle should not occur in a true Shih Tzu and Bichon Frise cross, since neither parent carries the gene. A “merle teddy bear dog” almost always means another breed was crossed in, and merle can bring deafness and eye problems, so be very cautious with any breeder charging a premium for it.
Are white teddy bear dogs more likely to be deaf?
No. The deafness link seen in some white dogs comes from specific genes, like double merle or extreme piebald, that a teddy bear dog’s ordinary Bichon white does not carry. A white teddy bear dog is no more prone to deafness than any other color.
Aaron has trained hundreds of dogs, fostered more than 50, and volunteered with rescues across Northern California. Every grade on The Pet Zone comes from hands-on experience, not a content brief.