The tabby pattern features dark stripes, swirling lines or dots, often in a lighter background. Mackerel, ticked, classic and spotted are the four types of tabby pattern that are found in British shorthairs. The most common is the mackerel tabby, which shows vertical narrow stripes on the sides of the body. The classic tabby has a swirled pattern, showing wider stripes. In the ticked tabby, the patterns are smaller, while the spotted tabby has spots instead of stripes. Common color combinations in the tabby pattern include gray with black, silver with black, and tan with dark brown or gray.
Tortoiseshell British shorthairs are mottled, showing patches of orange, cream, black, blue and chocolate. This pattern, which resembles the marks of a tortoise's shell, is more common in females than males, and sometimes comes mixed with large white patches, forming the pattern called calico. As the name suggests, bicolor British shorthairs have large patches of two colors, one of which is always white.
Self refers to single-colored British shorthairs, which generally are white, black, blue, red to orange, cream, lilac or chocolate. The smoke coat is often silver to dark gray, and looks like a solid color. However, when the cat moves, a white to silver undercoat is visible. Smoke British shorthairs have the so-called silver gene, giving them their distinct appearance.
Tipped British shorthairs also carry the silver gene, which results in a coat that looks pure white, but shows tipping of various dark colors, often black. Although more common in Siamese cats, colorpointed coats also occur in British shorthairs. The face, ears, legs and tail are often gray, in stark contrast with the white body.