Which Eye Colors Are the Rarest? (2023)

FAQs

Which eye color is 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.

Brown Eyes: 45 percent. Blue Eyes: 27 percent. Hazel Eyes: 18 percent (Note: Hazel eyes consist of shades of brown and green.) Green Eyes: 9 percent.

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.

Gray eye color is one of the loveliest and most uncommon, a trait shared by only 3% of the world's population. The color and intensity of gray eyes varies from person to person and can include dark gray, gray-green and gray-blue.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What is the rarest eye color for a redhead? ›

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.

How Rare Are Purple Eyes? People with purple eyes make up less than 1% of the world's population. This means purple, or violet, is truly one of the rarest eye colors across the globe.

The allele for brown eyes is the most dominant allele and is always dominant over the other two alleles and the allele for green eyes is always dominant over the allele for blue eyes, which is always recessive.

African-Americans with blue eyes are not unheard of, but they are pretty rare. There are lots of ways for this to happen. Some possible ways an African-American person might have ended up with blue eyes are: Caucasian relatives in their ancestry (the most likely reason)

Where in the world are the most green eyes? The highest concentration of people with green eyes is found in Ireland, Scotland, and northern Europe. In fact, in Ireland and Scotland, more than three-fourths of the population has blue or green eyes – 86 percent!

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

There are plenty of blue-eyed Asians. This probably happens when the traditional blue-eyed allele comes into a family from a (possibly very distant) European ancestor. Blue eyes then resurface in a child generations later if they inherit the allele from both parents.

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

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 pupil can change size with certain emotions, thus changing the iris color dispersion and the eye color. You've probably heard people say your eyes change color when you're angry, and that probably is true. Your eyes can also change color with age. They usually darken somewhat.

Do people have purple eyes? ›

Are Purple Eyes Rare? 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.

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.

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.

Lighter-colored eyes have less pigment to protect against sun damage and UV radiation compared to darker-colored eyes. This means that people with green, hazel, or blue eyes are more sensitive to light and more susceptible to UV damage.

Almond eyes are considered the most ideal eye shape because you can pretty much pull off any eyeshadow look. And believe me, this is a huge plus! Almond eyes have an oval shape with a slightly upturned outer corner.

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.

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.

Conversely, someone born with hazel eyes might see their irises get darker as they grow older. Eye colors do slightly change with age, but this should be a gradual transition.

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.

Who has purple eyes? ›

Violet Eyes

This color is most often found in people with albinism. It is said that you cannot truly have violet eyes without albinism. Mix a lack of pigment with the red from light reflecting off of blood vessels in the eyes, and you get this beautiful violet!

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.

There's a little genetic tweak that makes the combination of red hair and blue eyes the rarest of them all.

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.

TIL The rarest natural hair color in the world is red, with only 1-2% of the world population having natural red hair. Second is blond, with 3%, then brown/brunette, with 11%, and finally black with… You learn something new every day; what did you learn today?

Did Elizabeth Taylor have violet eyes? These days, thanks to colored contact lenses, anyone can have violet-colored eyes . Taylor didn't come by her purple peepers that way; the first tinted contact lenses weren't commercially available until 1983. Taylor's eye color was the real deal.

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.

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.

Brown eye colour is dominant over blue eye colour. Therefore, for the brown-eyed parents having blue-eyed child, the possibility is that both have heterozygous genotype i.e. Bb. Therefore, from the square below, it is clear that there is a 25% possibility of blue-eyed (bb) child.

People are often very confused by eye color genetics because reality seems to fly in the face of the simple genetics we are taught in school. First, the answer is yes to both questions: two blue-eyed parents can produce green or brown-eyed children.

Can two brown eyes make a green? ›

Both parents with brown eyes: 75% chance of baby with brown eyes, 18.8% chance of baby with green eyes, 6.3% chance of baby with blue eyes.

Blue is the second most common eye color globally, with an estimated 8 to 10 % of people having blue eyes. A majority of these people are of European descent, however, Black people can be born with blue eyes even though it's pretty rare.

The ethnic Miao people of Guizhou province from China, a subgroup of Hmong people, have been described as having blue eyes and blonde hair.

Black hair and blue eyes is a much more rare combination than is blonde hair and blue eyes. The reason why these two traits are linked is that the genes responsible for hair and eye color happen to be close together on the same chromosomes.

So where did our green-eyed ancestors come from? Most origins point to areas around the Caucasus Mountains, which link Asia and Europe. That may help explain why so many different countries and continents have had green-eyed populations for thousands of years.

The two countries with the highest rates of people with green eyes are Ireland and Scotland. More than 75 percent of people who are born with green eyes can be found in Ireland and Scotland.

While individuals having extremely light blonde hair represent only a small part of the Sicilian population, many Sicilians have blue or green eyes and light complexions (and red hair).

Are They Rare? Grey eyes are one of the rarest eye colors. Less than 3% of the global population has grey eyes. They're most commonly found in people of Northern and Eastern European ancestry.

Gray eyes

Green eyes are rarer than gray eyes, but only by 1%.

There's a little genetic tweak that makes the combination of red hair and blue eyes the rarest of them all.

Are amber eyes rare? ›

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.

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.