Hazel eyes mostly consist of shades of brown and green. Much like gray eyes, hazel eyes may appear to “change color” from green to light brown to gold.
There are two main types of hazel eyes: those with brown as the dominant color in the iris and those with green as the dominant color. While all hazel eyes will have a combination of green and brown colors, the difference in dominant colors is why hazel eyes can appear either mostly green or mostly brown.
One color may appear as a ring around the pupil while the other color may be on the outer edges of the iris. There may even be colored flecks within the iris. They're sometimes mistaken for green eyes for this reason. If you have green eyes with gold or brown flecks, those are hazel eyes.
People often confuse hazel with brown eyes because of the nearly similar hues. Although rare, hazel eyes have the second-highest concentration of melanin, making them appear light brown in some environments. Typically, hazel eyes take the color of a hazelnut — a mixture of green and brown.
More information about Hazel Eyes
Anyone can be born with hazel eyes, but it's most common in people of Brazilian, Middle Eastern, North African, or Spanish descent.
In most people, the answer is no. Eye color fully matures in infancy and remains the same for life.
When eyes are hazel, they are brown mixed with amber and green. In some cases, there are shades of gray, blue, and gold within the iris too. Brown eyes may also have some green in them.
Advantages of Hazel Eyes
The levels of melanin in hazel eyes may offer some benefits to the brain. People with hazel eyes appear to be less likely to have nerve damage from environmental noise than people with blue eyes. There are some beliefs that people with hazel eyes tend to have a more positive outlook on things.
Amber Eyes vs.
Hazel eyes are often a blend of green and brown, but you wouldn't see any green in amber eyes. Also, amber eyes typically appear as a more solid color, while hazel eyes seem to contain flecks of different hues (possibly even specks of amber).
Hazel eyes play a delicate game of limbo between brown and blue, having less pigment than brown and more than blue. Eye color can change through the years as amount of pigment in the eyes differs based on genetics.
As much as we'd like to believe that hazel eyes can change color like a mood ring does, most of the time it's really just a trick of the light! What you're seeing is actually Rayleigh scattering — the same phenomenon that makes the sky appear 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.
A blue and a green-eyed parent will have all hazel-eyed kids. This is one of the reasons I like the modifier gene explanation so much. It can help explain how green and blue-eyed parents might have hazel-eyed kids.
Hazel eyes mostly consist of shades of brown and green. Much like gray eyes, hazel eyes may appear to “change color” from green to light brown to gold.
According to the World Atlas, only about 5% of the world's population has hazel eyes, making them extremely uncommon. Meanwhile, blue eyes account for about 8 to 10% of the world population whereas brown eyes dominate at a whopping 79%. However, this doesn't make hazel the rarest eye color.
Hazel eyes are more common in North Africa, the Middle East, and Brazil, as well as in people of Spanish heritage.
Hazel eyes have also been voted as one of the most attractive eye colours and can, therefore, be argued to have the best of both worlds, health and beauty. Green eyes are incredibly rare, which may be the reason as to why some believe this to be the most attractive eye colour.
Your eye color fully matures in infancy. From this early age, you'll have naturally brown, blue, hazel, green, or gray eyes for the rest of your life. Some people wear colored contacts to enhance the intensity or change the color of their eyes.
People who had deep brown eyes during their youth and adulthood may experience a lightening of their eye pigment as they enter middle age, giving them hazel eyes. Conversely, someone born with hazel eyes might see their irises get darker as they grow older.
Each parent will pass one copy of their eye color gene to their child. In this case, the mom will always pass B and the dad will always pass b. This means all of their kids will be Bb and have brown eyes. Each child will show the mom's dominant trait.
A recent survey conducted by CyberPulse, a division of Impulse Research Corporation in Los Angeles uncovered this colorful research. Intelligence was the number one trait associated with brown, the most common eye color in the U.S., by 34 percent of respondents.
Those with darker colored eyes experience less visual discomfort in bright, sunny conditions. Also, darker irises reflect less light within the eye, reducing susceptibility to glare and improving contrast discernment—so people with darker eyes may have better vision in high-glare situations, such as driving at night.
Violet and red are unique eye colors caused by an iris with little to no pigment. 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.