[1] While the colorful coat pattern is essential to the identity of the breed, American Paint Horses have strict bloodline requirements and a distinctive stock-horse body type.

However, in the case of the dominant tobiano pattern, a Breeding Stock Paint will not carry these color genes, though it may retain other desirable traits.

[5] Paints may also carry the gray gene and have spots that eventually fade to white hair, though retaining pigmented skin underneath the areas that were once dark.

Spots can be any shape or size, except leopard complex patterning, which is characteristic of the Appaloosa, and located virtually anywhere on the Paint's body.

Although Paints come in a variety of colors with different markings and different underlying genetics, these are grouped into only four defined coat patterns: overo (includes frame, splash and sabino), tobiano and tovero and solid.

However, when a foal is born that is homozygous for the LWS gene, it should be humanely euthanized shortly after birth, or else will die within a few days from complications involving an underdeveloped intestinal tract.

LWS is also not unique to Paint Horses; it can occur in any equine breed where the frame overo coat pattern is found.

Due to the heavy influx of American Quarter Horse breeding, some Paints may also carry genetic disorders such as hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (HYPP), hereditary equine regional dermal asthenia (HERDA), equine polysaccharide storage myopathy (called PSSM – polysaccharide storage myopathy – in Paints, Quarter Horses and Appaloosas), malignant hyperthermia (MH) and glycogen branching enzyme deficiency (GBED).