What Is the Rarest Eye Color? (2024)

FAQs

What eye Colour is the rarest? ›

Green is considered by some to be the actual rarest eye color in the world, though others would say it's been dethroned by red, violet, and grey eyes. Green eyes don't possess a lot of melanin, which creates a Rayleigh scattering effect: Light gets reflected and scattered by the eyes instead of absorbed by pigment.

Of the less common eye colors, pink and red eyes are considered to be the most unique in the world, giving new meaning to the word “rare.” Only one in every 20,000 people have a form of albinism, according to the National Institutes of Health, and even fewer have red-tinted eyes.

Green eyes are rarer than gray eyes, but only by 1%. Around 3% of the world's population has gray eyes. Like blue eyes, gray eyes are caused by a lack of melanin in the iris. What sets them apart from blue irises is the stroma layer.

The world of eye color rareness is a fascinating one, with green, amber, gray, hazel, and violet or red eyes being the rarest of them all. These unique colors are a result of a complex interplay between genetic factors and the presence of pigments like melanin or lipochrome in the iris.

Unbelievable as it may seem, the answer is yes—natural purple eyes do exist. Purple eyes are also commonly referred to as “violet eyes,” as they are typically a light shade. For most people, this striking eye color can only be achieved with the help of colored contacts.

We found that green is the most popular lens colour, with brown coming in a close second, despite it being one of the most common eye colours. Although blue and hazel are seen as the most attractive eye colours for men and women they are surprisingly the least popular.

The vast majority of people in the world have brown eyes. The second most common color is blue, but people can also have green, gray, amber, or red eyes. Some people have eyes that are different colors than each other.

Complete heterochromia is definitely rare — fewer than 200,000 Americans have the condition, according to the National Institutes of Health. That's only about six out of every 10,000 people. It's currently unknown how rare central heterochromia is, but we do know that it isn't quite as rare as complete heterochromia.

True purple eyes are exceedingly rare. Less than 1% of the world's population has them, making them rarer than blue, hazel, amber, grey, or green.

How rare is red eyes? ›

Only 1% of people have pink and pale red eyes; they are typically albinos. Albinism happens when there is a problem with one of the genes inherited from the mother. Like red eyes, heterochromia is rare and effects less than 1% of the population.

The rarest skin color in the world is believed to be the white from albinism, a genetic mutation that causes a lack of melanin production in the human body. Albinism affects 1 in every 3,000 to 20,000 people. What is this? People with albinism usually have very pale or colorless skin, hair, and eyes.

2. Red/Pink Eyes. Two major conditions cause a red or pinkish eye color: albinism and blood leaking into the iris. Although albinos tend to have very, very light blue eyes due to a lack of pigment, some forms of albinism can cause eyes to appear red or pink.

Some people think that black eyes are one of the rarest eye colors. Have you ever seen someone with eyes that seem black as night? Although they appear black, they are really just a very, very dark brown, which is caused by an abundance of melanin.

Changes in eye color are rare. Sometimes, the color of your eye may appear to change when your pupils dilate. The colors in your environment, including lighting and your clothes, can give the illusion of eye color change.

The rarest natural hair colour is red, which makes up only one to two percent of the global population. You commonly see these hair colours in western and northern areas of Europe, especially Scotland and Ireland. However, natural redheads may not exist for much longer.

Around 1 in 4 people in the U.S. have blue eyes. Brown, which is the most common eye color in the world. Green, which is the least common eye color. Only 9% of people in the United States have green eyes.

Why are hazel eyes so rare? Only about 5 percent of the population worldwide has the hazel eye genetic mutation. After brown eyes, they have the most melanin. . The combination of having less melanin (as with green eyes) and a lot of melanin (like brown eyes) make this eye color unique.

The whites of your eyes (called the sclera) turn yellow when you have a condition called jaundice. The whites of your eyes might turn yellow when your body has too much of a chemical called bilirubin, a yellow substance that forms when red blood cells break down.

Elizabeth Taylor's Violet Eyes

"Violet may have been her typical pigmentation." Eye color can change based on the amount of light they're absorbing — and this can also be altered by the clothes we wear.

Is it possible to have Rainbow eyes? ›

Though common in some breeds of cats, dogs, cattle and horses due to inbreeding, heterochromia is uncommon in humans, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the United States, and is not associated with lack of genetic diversity.

Conversely, brown eyes are the most common color yet the least attractive to the survey's respondents. According to World Atlas, approximately 79% of the world's population has brown eyes, making it the most common eye color in the world.

Blue eyes also represent innocence and carefree. Brown eyes are a more mature eye color and represent stability, security and strength.

When broken down by gender, men ranked gray, blue, and green eyes as the most attractive, while women said they were most attracted to green, hazel, and gray eyes. Despite brown eyes ranking at the bottom of our perceived attraction scale, approximately 79% of the world's population sports melanin-rich brown eyes.

Although the traditional blue-eyed allele is rare in Asian populations, there are still a considerable number of people who have it.

Your children inherit their eye colors from you and your partner. It's a combination of mom and dad's eye colors – generally, the color is determined by this mix and whether the genes are dominant or recessive. Every child carries two copies of every gene – one comes from mom, and the other comes from dad.

Amber eyes are extremely rare. Most sources say that only about 5% of people have true amber eyes. Coming up with a hard and fast number or percentage, though, is not as easy as you might think—there simply haven't been enough large-scale studies done to quantify eye color prevalence with certainty.

Green irises (the rarest eye color) have less melanin than brown eyes but more than blue eyes, for instance. “Brown is on one end, blue on the other, and hazel and green are in between,” Dr. Patel says.

Irises are classified as being one of six colors: amber, blue, brown, gray, green, hazel, or red. Often confused with hazel eyes, amber eyes tend to be a solid golden or copper color without flecks of blue or green typical of hazel eyes. Blue eyes have a low level of pigment present in the iris.

How rare is pink eyes? ›

How common is pink eye? Pink eye is one of the most common eye infections in children and adults. There are about 6 million cases of pink eye in the U.S. each year.

Silver (grey) eyes: A grey-silver colour is quite rare and occurs as a result of virtually no melanin in the iris. Silver eyes are considered to be one of the rarest colours around the world, but when they do occur, this is most often seen in eastern Europe areas.

Unusual eye colors

True pink, red, or violet eyes are due to albinism, a condition in which the body is unable to produce or distribute melanin. The pink color is the color of the retina showing through.

Blue Eyes. Originally, all humans had brown eyes. Some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, a genetic mutation affecting one gene turned off the ability to produce enough melanin to color eyes brown causing blue eyes.

Red hair and green eye genes are simply not as common in populations as other hair and eye colors. One study found that the red hair-green eyes genetic combination is one of the rarest, at -0.14 correlation. Having red hair and blue eyes is even rarer.

Brown eyes are the most common: Over half the people in the world have them, according to the AAO. In fact, about 10,000 years ago, all humans had brown eyes.

According to researchers at Penn State University, translucent Irish can thank a genetic code inherited from a single person around 10,000 years ago. A native of either India or the Middle East, carrying the skin pigmentation gene logged as SLC24A5, passed it to the people of Ireland through his ancestors.

Olive skin is a human skin colour spectrum. It is often associated with pigmentation in the Type III to Type IV and Type V ranges of the Fitzpatrick scale. It generally refers to moderate or lighter tan or brownish skin, and it is often described as having tan to brown or golden undertones.

People have different skin colors mainly because their melanocytes produce different amount and kinds of melanin. The genetic mechanism behind human skin color is mainly regulated by the enzyme tyrosinase, which creates the color of the skin, eyes, and hair shades.

Are all babies born with blue eyes? No. Some Caucasian babies may have eyes that appear gray or blue because of the lack of pigment. As the baby is exposed to light, the eye color can start to change.

What color eyes will baby have? ›

If both the parents have hazel eyes, there are 99% chances that the baby will also have hazel eyes. If both the parents have brown eyes, there is a 75% chance that their child will have brown eyes. If both the parents have green eyes, there are 99% chances that the baby will also have green eyes.

“Can two parents with blue eyes have a child with brown eyes?” Yes, blue-eyed parents can definitely have a child with brown eyes.

Eye color doesn't significantly affect the sharpness of your vision, but it can affect visual comfort in certain situations. It all comes down to the density of the pigment melanin within your iris, which determines what colors of light are absorbed or reflected.

It's completely normal to see blue become brown, hazel, or even green as they get a little older. This color transition can take anywhere from a few months to three years to run its course.

Hazel eyes are generally a combination of brown, green, and gold. Sometimes, blue or even amber can make an appearance in hazel eyes, too. Often, hazel-colored eyes have a different hue around the pupil than on the eye's outer rim. This gradient of color can give hazel eyes a “sunburst” effect.

Some people believe that applying a mixture of honey and water can change your eye color over time. There's no evidence to suggest that this home remedy would work. It's unlikely that honey will penetrate deeper than the outer layers of your cornea, where there is no pigment.

In most people, the answer is no. Eye color fully matures in infancy and remains the same for life. But in a small percentage of adults, eye color can naturally become either noticeably darker or lighter with age. What determines eye color is the pigment melanin.

We all know the damaging effects the sun can have on our skin, but did you know you can get a sunburn on your eyes? An eye sunburn, called photokeratitis, occurs when ultraviolet (UV) rays cause damage to the surface of the eyes. Exposure to UV rays can cause inflammation within the eye, specifically to the corneas.

Close to 3% of the world's population have gray eyes. People with gray eyes have little or no melanin in their irises, but they have more collagen in a part of the eye called the stroma.

Silver (grey) eyes: A grey-silver colour is quite rare and occurs as a result of virtually no melanin in the iris. Silver eyes are considered to be one of the rarest colours around the world, but when they do occur, this is most often seen in eastern Europe areas.

Is Pink an eye color? ›

Unusual eye colors

True pink, red, or violet eyes are due to albinism, a condition in which the body is unable to produce or distribute melanin. The pink color is the color of the retina showing through.

Silver eye color is rare, although many consider silver eyes to be a variation of blue eye color. Like blue eyes, silver eyes are the result of a very low amount of pigmentation in the eye, which reflects a gray-silver appearance.

Amber eyes are extremely rare. Most sources say that only about 5% of people have true amber eyes. Coming up with a hard and fast number or percentage, though, is not as easy as you might think—there simply haven't been enough large-scale studies done to quantify eye color prevalence with certainty.

“Can two parents with blue eyes have a child with brown eyes?” Yes, blue-eyed parents can definitely have a child with brown eyes.