Brown is the most common eye color. Individuals with brown eyes have more melanin present, and over half of the people in the world have brown eyes. Gray eyes may be called “blue” at first glance, but they tend to have flecks of gold and brown.
Of those four, green is the rarest. It shows up in about 9% of Americans but only 2% of the world's population. Hazel/amber is the next rarest of these. Blue is the second most common and brown tops the list with 45% of the U.S. population and possibly almost 80% worldwide.
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. And while violet eyes are a rarity, they're really just a blue hue, with light bouncing off the surroundings and turning the eyes violet.
The world of eye color rareness is a fascinating one, with green, amber, gray, hazel, and violet or red eyes being the rarest of them all. These unique colors are a result of a complex interplay between genetic factors and the presence of pigments like melanin or lipochrome in the iris.
Violet Eyes
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!
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.
Your iris (the colored part of your eye) may change through a virus or disease process, leading to a slightly different hue to your eyes. The color may lighten due to a loss of pigmentation in your iris or atrophy when the muscle in your iris grows thinner. Causes could include: Pigment dispersion syndrome.
According to World Atlas, 8% - 10% of people in the world have blue eyes. Between 55% to 79% of people have brown eyes with dark brown eyes being most prominent in Africa, East Asia, and South East Asia. Light brown eyes are most common in West Asia, America and Europe.
In as much as 15 percent of the white population (or people who tend to have lighter eye colors), eye color changes with age. 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.
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.
People with albinism usually have eyes that are very light blue. Rarely, they have pink or red eyes. Without melanin, their irises are clear, which makes blood vessels inside the eye visible. The blood vessels give eyes their pink or red color.
The rarest skin color in the world is believed to be the white from albinism, a genetic mutation that causes a lack of melanin production in the human body. Albinism affects 1 in every 3,000 to 20,000 people. People with albinism usually have very pale or colorless skin, hair, and eyes.
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.
One way to tell them apart is by looking at the hue.
Blue eyes have a cobalt blue or sapphire color. They also tend to be lighter around the edges and darker in the center. Gray eyes, on the other hand, are usually darker around the edges and lighter in the middle.
Brown eyes are the most common: Over half the people in the world have them, according to the AAO. In fact, about 10,000 years ago, all humans had brown eyes.
They're considered to be attractive.
Lastly, brown eyes are often said to be very expressive. This is because they are able to show a wide range of emotions, from happiness to sadness. People are attracted to brown-eyed people because of this exact expressiveness.
Natural Age-Related Eye Color Changes
As they are exposed to light, melanin production increases, causing the color of their eyes to shift. However, eye color changes can also occur as a person ages. Those with lighter color eyes – especially Caucasians – may see their eyes lighten over time.
The genetic switch is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 and rather than completely turning off the gene, the switch limits its action, which reduces the production of melanin in the iris. In effect, the turned-down switch diluted brown eyes to blue.
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.
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.
Amber eyes: A golden yellow or copper colour occurs due to higher quantities of the pigment lipochrome (yellow pigment) and very little melanin, and are considered very rare. Amber-coloured eyes are most often seen in Asian and South American areas of the world.
Many babies will have light-colored eyes at first, but iris color continues to develop for months after birth. Some babies may be born with blue eyes, but others are born with brown or hazel eyes. In fact, blue eyes may be a little less common than you think.