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 many eye colors are there, and why your shade is unique to you. At some point, you've probably wondered what the rarest eye color is. The answer is green, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). Only about 2 percent of the world's population sport this shade.
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.
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. But the fact is that a small (albeit very small) percentage of people are indeed born with purple 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. Or green or hazel eyes for that matter.
"In Australians of European ancestry, the percentage of eye colours are 45 percent blue-grey, 30 percent green-hazel and 25 percent brown. If you're considering non-European ancestry it is the almost completely brown eye colour." But back to what peepers your bub might have.
While there is a limitless number of hues, shades, richness, and combinations of colors, most people agree about how many eye colors there are in general. And that number is six: brown, hazel, blue, green, gray, and amber.
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.
Determining the rarest eye color... not so straightforward
Green is the rarest eye color of the more common colors. Outside of a few exceptions, nearly everyone has eyes that are brown, blue, green or somewhere in between. Other colors like gray or hazel are less common.
The second-rarest eye color is hazel, a mixture of brown and green with golden flecks. About 18% of Americans have hazel eyes, compared with about 5% of the world's population.
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!
Did Elizabeth Taylor Really Have Purple Eyes? This is a popular myth. Elizabeth Taylor's eyes appeared purple in some photos due to lighting, makeup, and clothing. In reality, her eyes were blue, which can be seen in the vast majority of her photos.
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.
The laws of genetics state that eye color is inherited as follows: If both parents have blue eyes, the children will have blue eyes. The brown eye form of the eye color gene (or allele) is dominant, whereas the blue eye allele is recessive.
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.
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.
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.
And what would you think is the most attractive eye color? In a website poll of over 66,000 respondents, 20% said green was the most attractive, followed by hazel and light blue at 16%. Brown was far and away voted the least attractive (6%).
Blue eyes also represent innocence and carefree. Brown eyes are a more mature eye color and represent stability, security and strength.
Blue eyes are crowned the sexiest among men and women
From dark brown to hazel, brown eyes in various shades also dominate our research, with 49.33% of females and 55.33% of males in the research having a shade of brown eyes.