There are four colors created by the cream dilution; palomino, buckskin, smoky black, and double dilutes. Explore the cream dilute colors in individual pages in the menu.

The cream dilution (CR) mutation is found on the MATP gene. Cream is an incomplete dominant, meaning it cannot skip generations and one copy of cream looks different than two copies. There is a genetic test available for the cream dilution.

The cream dilution is common in Chincoteague Ponies and is often associated with the breed. Misty of Chincoteague was a palomino pinto, palomino is a cream dilute color. There are many cream dilutes in the Virginia Assateague herd. There is one remaining aged buckskin mare in the Maryland Assateague herd. The Atlantic island feral herd of Ocracoke Horses also has cream.

It isn't known exactly when the cream dilution was first introduced into Chincoteagues. What appears to be two palomino foals were photographed in 1927. Cream dilutes were seemingly common by the 1940s. It may have existed early in the breed as there are a few accounts describing ponies as dun. Dun is traditionally used to describe buckskins and the term is still used today in parts of Europe. A 1891 article in the New York City newspaper The Sun stated that the ponies "are most frequently black, gray, sorrel, or dun [buckskin]." Additionally the 1910 Pittsburgh Times stated that "White and dun-colored ponies are exceedingly rare." A 1923 St. Petersburg Times article described the ponies as "bay, gray, dun, black, and sorrel". Conversely Leonard D. Sale wrote in 1896 in The Horse Review of Chicago that, "I have never yet seen a grey, piebald, dun, or yellow purely bred island pony."