Apricots most often have black points which mean the noses, eye-rims and lips, black-or self-colored toenails and very dark eyes. They may, nevertheless, have dark amber eyes, liver nose leather, eye-rims and lips. This, too, is permissible, but not the ideal coloration. This is true for reds as well.
The apricot gene is a recessive to all the poodle colors except white.
It is not uncommon for an apricot to be dubbed a red or vice-versa. Additionally sometimes a cream will be called an apricot if it is deep. As a Poodle matures, color may lighten or deepen a bit and for this reason, a pup that appeared to be a light apricot may darken into a more solid medium cream or other similar toning that shows the wrong color was chosen at the time the pup was registered. Since a breeder can register a Poodle to be any color, not all owners of apricot Poodles will have that color designation on their dog's papers. Alternatively, there are owners of red or cream Poodles that have papers showing that the dog is apricot. These types of things do happen with breeds that come in such a wide range of not only colors, but variations and tones of those colors.
Apricot is one of the last poodle color to be recorded. Some say that is it indeed the very last one; others say that red sprang from apricot, making it simply one of the last.
It is suspected that apricot is a very rare occurring combination of brown , blue and perhaps white in different concentrations, which then produce the different shades that we see with apricot Poodles.