Show me your chestnuts! Black or Brown tack?

If you’re doing in-hand or any showing brown is the standard. Shires do a nice inexpensive in-hand bridle. If you want to do dressage in the future black dressage saddles are much more common.
 
My old boy (who was grey) also had the same mismatch, so I have had a black bridle/brown saddle combo for almost 20yrs now! When I upgraded my saddle 3.5yrs ago, I was hoping to get a black saddle to match the bridle, but despite searching far and wide I could only find a brown one! Doomed to not match for eternity... 🤣
 
Personally I think brown tack usually looks better on chestnuts. And most horses, really. Now it's been some time since I've had a chestnut, except for the one who doesn't need equipment, but I know I had a black bridle on my Haflinger. Brown would've looked better, but I didn't have the horse for long.
 
She looks rather fetching in that brown head collar.

I have a personal preference for black tack (my own Little Madam is a bay) but have brown tack for jumping and black tack for dressage, so not exactly fanatical about one or the other. I've decided to delay choosing for the youngsters by another year or two (one dark bay and one buckskin) by waiting to bit until a year later. I'm hoping Little Madam's saddles will fit one or both of them at some point, though I will need at least one extra saddle in case I have enough people around to ride all three at once at some point.
 
I think brown looks good on any horse. It's a neutral and natural colour - much like a tan handbag never really looking out of place. The only caveat is that if you want to do dressage and you intend to buy a second hand saddle most dressage saddles are black so you'd have much more choice. I'm keeping an eye out for a brown dressage saddle at the moment as I don't want to have to buy another bridle and they're very few and far between.
 
Your pony looks lovely in that brown headcollar so definitely go for brown bridle.

As for saddle, well, I've never really got the matchy thing - it's hard enough to get a saddle that fits both horse and rider, and you barely see any of it when the rider is up so colour of saddle is very low on list of 'must-haves'
 
catkin said:
Your pony looks lovely in that brown headcollar so definitely go for brown bridle.

As for saddle, well, I've never really got the matchy thing - it's hard enough to get a saddle that fits both horse and rider, and you barely see any of it when the rider is up so colour of saddle is very low on list of 'must-haves'
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I get the saddle that fits and then match bridle to saddle, so much easier and cheaper!
 
Brown is prettier, black easier to resell if you think you may need to upgrade your saddle at some point. Or maybe fashion has turned but brown saddles were definitely the minority about 10 years ago
 
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