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.
Violet is an actual but rare eye color that is a form of blue eyes. It requires a very specific type of structure to the iris to produce the type of light scattering of melanin pigment to create the violet appearance.
We did a little digging to answer these questions and here's what we found: Her eye color was actually natural — for the most part. Colored contacts weren't commercially available until 1983, so Taylor wasn't faking it. However, she was born with a very specific and rare amount of the pigment melanin.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
While some people may appear to have irises that are black, they don't technically exist. People with black-colored eyes instead have very dark brown eyes that are almost indistinguishable from the pupil. In fact, brown eyes are even the most common eye color in newborn babies.
Red or Violet Eyes
When light reflects off of the blood vessels in eyes that lack typical pigmentation, the eyes appear violet or red. Astonishing as it may seem, these eye colors occur naturally—and are extremely rare.
Green. An estimated 2% of the world's population have green eyes, making them very rare overall. However, green eyes are very common in some parts of the world, including Ireland and Scotland. In the U.S., where many people descend from ancestors from Ireland and Scotland, about 9% of people have green eyes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So really, any combination can result in a blue-eyed child, but only if there is blue eyes somewhere in one of the parents' ancestral lines. This is rare so blue eyes remain rare. But, if both parents have blue eyes or green eyes, the odds are a lot higher.
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. Hazel, a combination of brown and green.
Amber colored eyes may be seen in cats and other species on a regular basis, but it's very rare in humans. People with solid orange/gold eyes have a unique pigment called pheomelanin dominant within the iris. While it's also found in people with green eyes, it's a much smaller amount.
Permanent changes to eye color can be achieved through iris implant surgery, corneal pigmentation, and laser eye color change. Iris Implant Surgery is a procedure that inserts a prosthetic iris into the eye. It was originally developed to treat iris defects such as albinism and aniridia.
The iris has pigmentation that determines the eye color. 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.
If both the parents have brown eyes, then there is generally a 25% chance for their child to have blue eyes. Because both the brown-eyed parents have a recessive blue-eye gene and can pass it to the next generation. However, since eye color is polygenic, several other genes exert their effects as well.
There's a little genetic tweak that makes the combination of red hair and blue eyes the rarest of them all. The same Nature study mentioned above found that another gene variant, HERC2, interacts with both the MC1R gene and the OCA2 gene—and it can shut off the redhead gene while expressing blue eyes and blonde hair.