Appearance

Silver affects the mane and tail, lightening it anywhere from just slightly lighter (brown or grey) to pure white.

Can be darker at the roots, or a solid color throughout.

Optional effect: Body silvering

Silver can optionally fully or partially lighten the body coat as well, generally affecting the black-pigment areas and lightening them into a soft brown or grey.

Optional effect: Merle

Merle creates unmodified 'holes' in the body-silvering effect where the horse's base coat shows through. This does not change how the mane or tail express silver, they should always show normal silver (being lighter or white).

Body silvering from merle can optionally affect the entire body, or just the black points.

Merle may optionally add lighter streaks in the mane and tail where body silvering touches. Any streak created by a merle patch must still look like a normal silver mane/tail color, and body-silvering streaks should simply lighten the hair closer to the roots so the mane and tail still transition into roughly the same light shade toward the tips.

Lighter streaks in the mane/tail on silver bays are allowed even if the merle isn't affecting the red-pigmented area, as seen on the first example below.

Merle 'spots' should never darken the coat or cause darker streaking in the mane/tail, it's simply an absence of body-silvering, showing the coat underneath.