A short time ago I was invited to give a seminar on the Bouvier to a judges study group.  At that seminar, I was asked to compare and contrast Bouvier color, most notably the color "Fawn" and the color "White".

I hope the following will help.

In order to understand what is acceptable,  we have to know that the Standard severely penalizes Chocolate Brown, White, or Parti-color. That being said color is defined as a sense of light, and an individuals perception. It involves a combination of hue, lightness, and saturation of pigment, and other substances that imparts color.

The method of determining color is a simple principle.  The terms: light, medium and dark designate decreasing degrees of lightness, whereas: grayish, moderate,  strong and vivid designate increasing degrees of saturation.

White, gray and black combine to form the names for describing color in terms of the perceptual attributes of: hue, lightness and saturation.

The Munsell System is a collection of colors that present equal visual intervals that has been defined by the Inter-Society Color Council at the National Bureau of Standards as the: ISCC-NBS System.

This System divides color into 267 blocks or chips, each of which defines a color name, so they can be understood and identified.

In terms of the Munsell System of color notation, it specifies colors on a numerical scale of: hue, value and chroma.

At the National Bureau of Standards, reddish brown and yellowish brown are hues, used in the ISCC-NBS System.

Hue is the dimension of color that is refereed to in scale of perception, ranging from red through yellow,  as a particular gradation of color, tint or shade.

Fawn is described as: grayish yellowish brown to light grayish or moderate reddish brown.

As none of the "hues" are described in the Standard,  Fawn has also come to be described as a wheaton like color, or lion like, not taking the name wheaton from the dog,  but rather, from the color of wheat. The same is true of an oaken color.

When I was asked to provide examples and to compare and contrast them, I did. I compared a dog (which shall remain unnamed) with another. One being the color fawn and the other being the color white. Having compared and contrasted these colors, and these judges now having a good idea as to what the color fawn is, I then had to ask if you really know what the color "White" is?  After all, in order to know fawn, you should also know white.

In answering my own question, in order to know fawn from white, we must contrast them. "White" is an achromatic color of maximum lightness.  White" is devoid of "hue" and always depends on contrast such as "black" being the complement or the antagonist with the other extreme being a neutral gray, a "washed out" color.

What this all comes down to is: "PIGMENTATION", which is one of the characteristics that we seek in breeding.

Pigmentation is the coloration of tissue,  such as chlorophyll in plants.  The characteristic that implants color on animal tissue is: "Hemoglobin",   being that hemoglobin is oxygen bearing, iron containing conjugated protein in the red blood cells.

An example that I have used is a swimming pool. Check out the iron content in the water: if there is too much iron in the water, you will note a staining on the pool, similar to the color or "hue" of fawn.

Remember that "White" is devoid of "hue" while fawn is a "hue" of colors; "white" also having an absence of  pigmentation, while fawn has pigmentation.