Although the amount and type of pigment are already locked into your baby's DNA, your baby's hair color is still developing. This may continue until they are six or seven years old. A child's hair color can change dramatically over several years.
And since genes can turn on and off throughout our lives, this means your hair color can change! The most important genes here are ones that make pigment, which is what gives hair its color.
Many blonde children end up with darker hair as they get older because their hair produces more eumelanin as they age. We don't know why it happens, but that's how it happens.
Generally, dark hair chromosomes are more common. Children with two brown-haired alleles will present brown hair. Children with one brown-haired allele and one blonde-haired allele will present brown hair as well. Only those with two blonde-haired alleles will have blonde hair.
It's all completely normal! Color changes can continue into kindergarten; don't be surprised if your baby's hair color gets lighter, then darker again, before settling into the shade it's going to be for most of childhood.
If you and your partner have brown hair, there's a good chance your little one will too. But if one of you has a little darker hair or more eumelanin (the pigment responsible for dark hair, skin, and eye colors), then your baby might have darker locks (1). The same goes for blond and red colors.
It is quite common for Caucasian babies to be born with very dark hair, black or almost black; and for that hair to fall out during the first couple of months, slowly to be replaced with lighter hair, usually a shade of brown, although it can go full blond. That is due to melanin expression in utero.
Each parent carries two alleles (gene variants) for hair color. Blonde hair is a recessive gene and brown hair is a dominant gene.
Red hair can change
Depending on the shade of red a baby has when it's born, it may stay a redhead or it may turn a different color. Most likely, the hair will always have some sort of red undertones to it. This may be only visible in the sun or may come out in other ways like in a man's beard.
Typically, children with dark hair will keep their dark hair into adulthood. But some children with light hair, including towhead blonds, strawberry blonds, dishwater blonds and redheads, see their hair go dark brown by their 10th birthday.
With aging, the follicles make less melanin, and this causes gray hair. Graying often begins in the 30s. Scalp hair often starts graying at the temples and extends to the top of the scalp. Hair color becomes lighter, eventually turning white.
Dark hair, specifically, gets its color from eumelanin, one of the three basic types of melanin. Many blonde children end up with darker hair as they get older because their hair produces more eumelanin as they age.
Changes to the inner and outer structure of the hair shaft can damage hair, making it fragile and prone to breakage, which could eventually result in thinning hair or hair loss in areas. Hair dyes can weaken hair, but people can take precautions to minimize potential damage if they still choose to dye their hair.
The biggest contributing factor is your hormones. Generally speaking, blonde hair usually turns brown – or at least darker – as we age.
Does permanent hair dye fade? Sadly, yes. While permanent hair dye won't wash out of your hair in the same way that temporary, or semi-permanent hair dye does, it will eventually start to fade and change shade over time. The colour you go for will also influence how long your hair will stay vibrant.
Blonde is Crowned the Sexiest Hair Colour of 2021!
The second sexiest hair colour is brunette, as more than three quarters of people (28.5%) voted this shade.
Red is the rarest hair color, according to Dr. Kaplan, and that's because so few MC1R variants are associated with the shade. “Only three variants are associated with red hair,” she says. “If a person has two of these three variants, they almost certainly have red hair.
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.
Is Hair Color Inherited from Mother or Father? Hair color comes from both parents through the chromosomes passed onto their child. The 46 chromosomes (23 from each parent) have genes made up of DNA with instructions of what traits a child will inherit. The results can be surprising.
If two brunette parents both have a recessive blonde gene, there's a 25% chance they'll each pass down their recessive gene, resulting in a blonde child.
If you have a child born with very dark hair and then becomes blond, this would suggest that the gene that's making melanin when they're a baby has been turned off. If a child is born with blond hair and becomes dark, it's because genes have started turning on melanin pigment.
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.
Eyebrow color is one of the most recognizable visual traits of the human body. It has a strong correlation with hair color, but scientists believe in the existence of overlapping and unique genetic components for both traits.
But the baby hair that grows in may be nothing like your little one's newborn locks. Color and texture often change — so your baby's thick, dark hair could make its reappearance a lot sparser and lighter. Red can give way to blond. Curly can go straight.