Baby poop colour chart: what every shade actually means

You open the nappy. It's green. Or black. Or that strange mustard-yellow seedy thing. Is it normal? Should you call someone? Should you photograph it?

Baby poop changes colour constantly in the first year, and most of those changes are completely normal. A few aren't. Here's how to tell them apart at 2 AM without spiralling.

The short version

Most baby poop colours fall somewhere on the green-yellow-brown spectrum, and all of those are fine. The three colours to actually worry about are white (chalky), black (after the first week), and red (true blood, not from food).¹

Colour by colour

Black or dark green-black (first 1–3 days)

This is meconium — the sticky, tar-like stool your baby was holding from in utero. It's made of swallowed amniotic fluid, skin cells, and bile. It's supposed to look alarming. By around day 3, it transitions to a greenish-brown, then to whatever colour suits their feeding pattern.²

Mustard yellow, seedy

The classic breastfed baby poop. Often runny, sometimes the texture of mustard with cottage-cheese-like seeds. Smells faintly sweet rather than offensive. Completely normal — and so is going through 8 of these a day in the first weeks.

Tan, beige, or peanut-butter brown

The classic formula-fed baby poop. More formed, often pastier, smellier than breastfed poop. Also normal.

Green

Green poop has a long list of harmless causes: a bit of foremilk-hindmilk imbalance in breastfed babies, an iron-fortified formula, a tummy bug clearing through, even just food moving through faster than usual. Green that lasts a day or two and the baby is otherwise fine? Don't worry about it.

Brown

Once your baby is on solids (around 6 months), poop firms up and shifts brown. This is the new baseline. Different colours of brown depending on what they ate yesterday is fine.

Orange

Usually food-related once solids start — carrots, sweet potato, butternut squash. In a younger baby, orange can come through from antibiotics or an iron supplement. Almost always benign.

Red

This is the one that scares parents most, and it splits into two cases:

• Food-related red: beetroot, tomato, red dragon fruit, blueberries (which can also look black-purple). If your baby ate it, it can come out the other end looking like blood.
• Actual blood: streaks of bright red on otherwise normal stool can be a small anal fissure from a hard poop. Larger amounts, or red mixed into the stool (not on the surface), or the appearance of dark currant-jelly clots are different — call your pediatrician.¹

Black (after the first week)

After meconium has cleared, black stool is no longer expected. It can mean digested blood from higher in the gut. Iron supplements can also cause very dark green-black poop, which is normal — but if your baby isn't on iron and the stool is genuinely black, call your pediatrician.¹

White, chalky, or pale grey

This is the rarest and most important colour to recognise. Pale, putty-coloured, or chalky-white stool can indicate a problem with bile flow from the liver — including biliary atresia, which is rare but time-sensitive to diagnose. This warrants a same-day call to your pediatrician, even if your baby seems otherwise fine.^{1 3}

A quick reference table

When to call your pediatrician

Don't wait if you see:

• White, chalky, or pale grey stool
• True blood (more than a faint streak), or currant-jelly stools
• Black stool after the first week, with no iron supplement
• Persistent green diarrhoea with fewer wet nappies, fever, or lethargy

For everything else, the right move is usually: log it, mention it at the next check-up, and trust the pattern.

Track the colour, not just the count

Colour changes are easier to spot when you have a baseline. Logging each nappy with a one-tap colour gives you a week of context — so when something shifts, you'll know it actually shifted, not just that you're tired.

← Back to the complete guide: Baby poop overview

Also in this cluster: Bristol stool scale · How often should baby poop by age · Breastfed vs formula-fed poop

Sources

1. American Academy of Pediatrics. "Baby's First Bowel Movements." HealthyChildren.org, 2023. https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/baby/diapers-clothing/Pages/Babys-First-Bowel-Movements.aspx
2. NHS. "Your newborn baby's poo (meconium)." NHS.uk, 2023. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/caring-for-a-newborn/your-newborn-babys-poo/
3. Children's Liver Disease Foundation. "Yellow Alert: Stool Colour Chart." 2024. https://childliverdisease.org/yellow-alert/