Colour guide
Holland Lop Colors
Thirty-plus recognised colours, in five groups.
The genetics behind each one, what a good example looks like, what faults to check for, and whether it is genuinely rare or simply marketed that way.
Holland Lop colours are organised into groups rather than a flat list, because the groups describe how a colour is built rather than what it looks like.
Two rabbits can both read as “brown” to a buyer and be a chestnut agouti and a chocolate tort. Different genetics, different price, different litters.
Rarity in this breed is mostly about consistency, not novelty. Producing a clean broken pattern with a proper butterfly, or a lilac without ending up with a poor blue, is the hard part. That is what you are actually paying for when a colour costs more.
Below is every colour we work with, grouped, with the genotype where it is useful. If you are set on a particular colour, tell us and we will say honestly whether it is coming out of a current pairing or whether you would be waiting a year for it.
Self
Self colours
The solid colours. One colour, evenly, from nose to tail. Simple to describe and unforgiving to breed, because a self colour shows every fault.
Black
A dense, glossy black from nose to tail, carried all the way down to the skin, with dark brown eyes.
Blue
An even medium slate grey from nose to tail, with matching blue-grey eyes. Reads as a soft, cool colour rather than a true grey.
Chocolate
A rich, even brown from nose to tail. The eyes carry a ruby cast that glows red in low light or when a torch is shone across them.
Lilac
A dove grey with a distinctly warm, pinkish cast. In some light it reads grey, in some light it reads faintly mauve, which is where the name comes from.
Cream
A pale, even buttermilk coat with no shading, no points, and no ticking. The palest of the warm colours.
Orange
A bright, saturated orange over a white belly, with darker lacing along the edges of the ears. Photographs extremely well, which is part of why it sells.
Blue Eyed White
A pure white coat with genuinely blue eyes. Not an albino, and not a ruby eyed white. The eyes are the point.
Vienna Marked
A normally coloured rabbit carrying one copy of the Vienna gene, which shows up as a white blaze on the face, a white snip on the nose, white feet, or one or two blue eyes.
Shaded
Shaded colours
Colours that grade from light to dark across the body. The tort family lives here, and so do the sables. Shaded colours are the most common in the breed and the most variable.
Black Tort
A warm fawn body shading to near black over the ears, nose, feet and tail. The most recognisable Holland Lop colour there is, and the one most people picture when they picture the breed.
Blue Tort
A soft slate-grey haze over the muzzle, ears and hindquarters, warming to fawn along the flanks and belly. Softer and cooler than a black tort.
Tort
The umbrella term for the shaded fawn-to-dark pattern, which appears in black, blue, chocolate and lilac variants.
Sable Point
A cream or off-white body with dark sepia points on the ears, nose, feet and tail. Reads a little like a Siamese cat, which is exactly what the genetics are doing.
Siamese Sable
A dark sepia saddle fading gradually to lighter sepia along the flanks and belly. There is no sharp boundary between the dark and light areas, which is what separates it from a sable point.
Smoke Pearl
A pearl-grey body deepening to smoke over the saddle, ears and face. Subtle, cool-toned, and frequently mistaken for a sable.
Agouti
Agouti colours
The banded colours. Each individual hair has three or more bands of colour along its length, which is what gives an agouti its depth. This is the wild rabbit pattern and every other colour is a modification of it.
Chestnut Agouti
The wild rabbit colour. Brown-black ticking over an orange band, with a slate undercoat and a white belly. Complex, and much prettier in person than in photographs.
Opal
A blue-over-fawn agouti with a slate undercoat. The banded hair shafts give it real depth in sunlight, and it shifts noticeably depending on the light.
Lynx
A fawn and lilac agouti that reads almost pinkish-orange, over a pearl undercolour. Warm, soft, and quite unlike anything else in the breed.
Otter
Otter colours
A dark body with cream or tan trim underneath, around the eyes, along the jaw and inside the ears. Sharply marked and increasingly popular.
Black Otter
A black body with tan-to-cream trim along the belly, the jawline, the eye circles, the nostrils and the inside of the ears. Sharp, and very smart looking.
Blue Otter
A slate blue body with the same cream otter markings. Softer contrast than a black otter, and quieter overall.
Chocolate Otter
A chocolate body with cream markings on the belly, jawline, eye circles and the underside of the tail. Warm, and less common than either the black or blue version.
Broken
Broken colours
Colour patched over white, with a butterfly marking across the nose. The pattern is random, which means no two are alike and none of it can be bred for precisely.
Broken Black
Crisp black patching over white, with the classic butterfly marking across the nose and coloured circles around the eyes.
Broken Blue
Soft slate blue patching over white, generally with lighter overall coverage than a broken black.
Broken Orange
Warm orange patches over white. Bright, clean, and one of the best-selling patterns in the breed largely because it photographs so well.
Broken Tort
Tort colouring laid over white in patches, with a butterfly across the nose. Because the tort itself is shaded, no two broken torts look remotely alike.
Harlequin
Alternating bars and patches of orange and a dark colour, black, blue, chocolate or lilac. The two colours should split the rabbit, ideally with the face divided down the middle.
Magpie
A harlequin pattern with the orange replaced by white, giving alternating bands of white and black, blue, chocolate or lilac. Dramatic, and quite unlike anything else.
Tri Color
White with two additional colours patched across it, usually black and orange, or blue and fawn. Effectively a broken harlequin.
Does colour change the price?
At most rabbitries, yes. At ours, no. Every Holland Lop here is $300 to $400 regardless of colour, because we would rather place a rabbit with the right household than with whoever will pay a premium for a coat.
That said, it is worth understanding what the premiums elsewhere are actually for. A lilac is genuinely hard to produce because it needs two recessive genes to line up. A blue tort is not, and anyone charging you rare-colour money for one is charging you for the word.
How to judge a colour from a photograph
Badly, is the honest answer. Colour on a screen is unreliable, indoor lighting flatters a coat, and a seller who only ever shows you one angle is showing you the angle that works.
Ask for a photograph taken in daylight. Ask what the undercolour looks like when the fur is parted. If a breeder cannot answer, they do not know their own line.
Sources
Written from experience breeding Holland Lops since 2020.