White and near-white-colored horses are some of the most spectacular horses to see. From the bleach-white coats of the Camarillo White Horse to the creamier colored Palominos, these horses are highly desired for the luxurious appearance of their coats.
While white horses and those with similar-colored coats are beautiful to behold, they do come with an inherent problem—they’re hard to keep clean! White stains easily and even the smallest bit of dirt shows up clearly on a white coat.
Luckily, whitening shampoos are designed to combat this specific problem, providing deep cleaning, neutralizing any foul odors, and brightening the coat all at once. But some products on the market are riddled with problems, dying your horse’s coat blue or drying out the hair. We wanted to find the best whitening shampoos for horses that were free of these issues. In the following reviews, you’ll read about the shampoos that most impressed us and how they compare, allowing you to make an informed decision about which is best for your horse.
Quick Glance at the Winners of 2024
| Image | Product | Details | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Best Overall
|
|
Fiebing's Blue Frost Whitening Horse Shampoo |
|
Check Price |
Best Value
|
|
Farnam Vetrolin White N' Brite Whitening Shampoo |
|
Check Price |
Premium Choice
|
|
WashBar Natural Horse Shampoo Bar |
|
Check Price |
|
One Shot Whitening Shampoo |
|
Check Price | |
|
Cowboy Magic Shine Whitening Shampoo |
|
Check Price |
The 7 Best Whitening Shampoo for Horses
1. Fiebing’s Blue Frost Whitening Horse Shampoo – Best Overall
Plenty of options exist for keeping your horse white, but given the choice, we’d pick Fiebing’s Blue Frost Whitening Horse Shampoo almost every time. It’s an excellent product that conditions and strengthens hair while cleaning it deeply. At the same time, it works to remove damaging free radicals.
You might expect such a powerful product to dry out your horse’s coat, but because this is an aloe-based formula, it actually moisturizes while cleaning, so it never leaves your horse’s coat feeling dry. Instead, the coat remains luscious and soft. It’s a powerful shampoo that does a great job of deep cleaning, leaving your horse’s coat looking whiter than ever before.
Thanks to brightening agents, this shampoo will whiten any light-colored coat, leaving it looking new again. But that comes at a cost. If left in too long, it could turn your horse’s coat blue. Done correctly, it will leave them whiter than you remember them being, with a light baby-powder fragrance that lasts between washes. Your horse has never seemed as fresh as it will when using this whitening horse shampoo, which is why it’s our best overall choice.
2. Farnam Vetrolin White N’ Brite Whitening Shampoo – Best Value
You don’t have to spend a fortune to keep your white horse looking fresh. Offering twice as much product in an ultra-concentrated formula at a better price than the competition, it’s easy to see why we think the Farnam Vetrolin White N’ Brite is the best whitening shampoo for horses for the money.
This shampoo comes in a 32-ounce bottle, but it’s concentrated enough to allow for 16 washes from a single bottle. Unlike many formulas, this one is strong enough to remove even the worst of stains, including those that were created by urine or manure. Despite its powerful whitening effect, this shampoo doesn’t dry out your horse’s coat. For that, you can thank the coconut oil derivatives that moisturize while whitening and cleaning. Plus, those derivatives increase the absorption of the brightening agents, allowing them to work even better than they could on their own.
In our testing, we found that you get a lot of bang for your buck with this shampoo. On the downside, it’s not as effective as we’d like for odor control. If your horses are really smelly, we’d recommend choosing a different formula, as this one isn’t super effective for removing odors.
3. WashBar Natural Horse Shampoo Bar – Premium Choice
While horse shampoos are the norm, they’re not the only way to wash your horse. They’re not even the sole way you can whiten your horse’s coat. Say hello to the WashBar Natural Horse Shampoo Bar. It’s perfect for those eco-minded individuals who don’t want to use plastic since no plastic is used in its packaging. Though it’s quite expensive considering the small size of the bar, it lasts a surprisingly long time. Still, it’s a bit more difficult to use than shampoo and takes a bit more lathering and elbow grease.
This shampoo bar is perfect for cleaning hard-to-reach places since it won’t just slide off like liquid shampoos. Its lightening formula is surprisingly effective at brightening the coats of light-colored horses. Best of all, the bar is medicated to help heal allergies and skin conditions, making it one of the healthiest options we’ve tested for your horse. It’s still on the expensive side though, which is the main reason it’s not our top pick.
4. One Shot Whitening Shampoo
One of the biggest problems we’ve run into with most of these whitening shampoos is that they can dye your horse’s skin and coat blue if left on too long! Needless to say, most horse owners don’t want their prized white horses turning blue, and this dye is near-impossible to wash off. But the One Shot Whitening Shampoo doesn’t dye the skin or coat, even when left on for longer than necessary.
The downside of this formula is that it’s just not as powerful or effective as the shampoos that do turn your horse blue. For example, it doesn’t work on urine stains, which can be a bane for a white horse. Still, you get a lot out of a bottle since this recipe dilutes with a water-solution ratio of 10:1.
If you have multiple white-coated animals, then this shampoo is great for you. It’s a gentle enough formula to be safe for multiple species, including livestock, dogs, cats, puppies, kittens, and more. Pleasantly, it leaves behind a subtle fragrance of ocean breeze. Overall, it’s a great whitening shampoo, but not quite effective enough to break into our top three.
5. Cowboy Magic Shine Whitening Shampoo
No matter what color your horse’s coat is, you can use Cowboy Magic Shine Whitening Shampoo to make it a bit brighter. It’s perfect for neutralizing yellow stains, such as those from urine. Strong enough to remove the toughest stains, it’s still safe for use on white, black, chestnut, bay brown, roan, palomino coats, and more.
This shampoo is powerful at brightening and whitening. But like many similar products that are effective at brightening your horse’s coat, this shampoo will turn your horse blue if left in too long. That blue staining won’t come out either, so you must be very careful when using this product.
We found that this shampoo was great for cleaning. It’s proudly produced in the USA and surprisingly leaves hair feeling soft and silky rather than stripped and dead. But our bluing problems were pronounced, and with no effective solution, they held this shampoo back in our eyes.
6. Exhibitor Laboratories Quic Silver Whitening Shampoo
Quic Silver is far pricier than other whitening shampoos we tested. That’s because it’s a two-part process, and you’re getting 16 ounces of both a shampoo and a whitening intensifier. The shampoo does a great job of deep cleaning without drying the coat out. But the whitening intensifier can stain your horse if you’re not careful. That’s no different from other brightening shampoos we tried, but this one didn’t seem to leave the coats as bright as other products we tested.
The worst part about this shampoo and intensifier set is the price. It’s quite a bit more expensive than alternatives, though we found that it didn’t work quite as well. For those reasons, this shampoo will remain towards the bottom of our list. There are just too many competing products that work better for a lower price.
7. Weaver Leather Livestock Whitening Shampoo
If you’ve got an entire stable full of horses or cattle to whiten, then you might consider the Weaver Leather Livestock Whitening Shampoo, as it comes in large volumes up to a gallon. Otherwise, we wouldn’t recommend this product over all the other viable options on the market. That said, there are still some noteworthy things about this product, such as the UV absorbers it contains to protect skin and hair.
Our biggest issue with this shampoo is its poor cleaning ability. It doesn’t lather well, so you have to use a lot of product to get a decent effect, though it still left our horses looking pretty dirty. It’s got whitening agents that barely seem to brighten the coat, though they’ll still stain your horse blue if left on longer than recommended.
You can use this on all livestock, which is convenient for farms. Aside from this, there aren’t too many times we’d be turning to a product like this with marginal results at best. If it were better at cleaning or whitening, it might be higher on our list.
Buyer’s Guide: Selecting the Best Whitening Shampoo for Horses
Picking a whitening shampoo for your horse doesn’t seem like a difficult task until you see how many options there are. You could grab any old shampoo off the shelf, but you’ll have no guarantee of its effectiveness. Another option is to trust our opinions and take our recommendations at face value. Even if you opt to go that route, we still recommend reading this buyer’s guide to familiarize yourself with the most important considerations to think about when choosing a whitening shampoo for your horse.
Comparing Whitening Shampoos for Horses
In essence, all whitening shampoos are intended to do the same things. They’re meant to clean your horse and whiten or brighten its coat. It’s how well each product performs these tasks that we’re concerned with.
Causing Accidental Staining
Many of the more effective whiteners in our testing also had a serious side effect. If you leave these products on your horse for too long, they’ll turn the coat blue. This is a very strong dyeing effect that won’t come out with regular washing. On the other hand, products without this side effect didn’t seem to work as well for brightening or whitening, though they can still be effective shampoos.
Cleaning Power Is Important
Aside from whitening, whatever shampoo you pick has to clean your horse’s coat! We tried some whitening shampoos that were effective at brightening a coat, though they didn’t do a great job of cleaning it. If your horse isn’t clean after bathing, then all your work was for naught. We recommend finding a shampoo that’s a cleaner first and a whitener second.
How Does the Coat Feel?
The final thing to really consider when comparing these products is how they leave your horse’s coat feeling after using them. If your horse’s coat feels coarse and brittle after washing with a particular product, then even if it’s great at leaving your horse’s coat white and bright, it might not be a great long-term option for coat health. There are plenty of options available that can moisturize your horse’s coat and keep it healthy while also cleaning it and making it appear bright and white.
Conclusion
There are a surprising number of whitening shampoos available for horses. It’s a popular product, so you get a lot of choices. In our testing, we found that these shampoos are not all equally effective, as you read in the reviews. After all was said and done, we settled on three shampoos that we feel the most confident recommending to you.
Our top choice is the Feibing’s Blue Frost Whitening Horse Shampoo. This formula conditions while it cleans, strengthening hair and removing damaging free radicals. It’s formulated to keep white coats free of dirt and contains brightening agents to keep them as bright as possible.
For the best value, we suggest the Farnam Vetrolin White N’ Brite Deep Cleaning Horse Shampoo. You can clean 16 horses with a single bottle of this blend that moisturizes while it cleans and simultaneously brightens light-colored coats.
If you’re an eco-minded individual, you might prefer the WashBar Natural Horse Shampoo Bar. It uses no plastic in the packaging and is perfect for cleaning hard-to-reach areas on your horse. Plus, it’s medicated to heal allergies and skin conditions with a whitening formula that brightens your horse’s coat.
Related reads:
