If you have the rarest hair and eye color combination, you're one in a million—or more!
If you have dark brown hair and brown eyes, you have something in common with most people around the globe. According to the World Atlas, between 75% and 85% of the world’s population has dark brown or black hair, and 70% to 79% of people have brown eyes. So what are the rarest hair and eye color combinations? To understand that, we need to understand a bit of genetics.
There’s a lot more to it than the simple dominant and recessive traits we learned about in high school biology. Those lessons taught us that different versions of a gene can be dominant (what you see) or recessive (what you don’t see), and they helped explain fun facts like why some people are born with blue eyes versus brown or green.
But that’s a simplistic view of eye color, and determining hair color is even more complex. According to Julie Kaplan, MD, a physician at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare, your hair color in particular is tied to variations in a specific gene. Knowing which genes play a role in hair and eye color variation can help us understand why some hues are more common than others. Keep reading to learn what the rarest hair and eye color combinations are, plus other tidbits of information, including facts about redheads.
The rarest hair color
Your father has brown hair. Your mother’s a blonde. And you somehow ended up with flaming red hair. It’s all thanks to a single gene.
The MC1R (or melanocortin 1 receptor) gene helps decide your hair, skin and eye coloring. It sends signals to the melanocytes—cells that create melanin in your body—and depending on your genes, it creates eumelanin (usually associated with darker hair and skin) or pheomelanin (associated with light-colored hair, like red or blond, and fairer skin). In redheads in particular, the MC1R gene doesn’t function the correct way and causes these cells to make mostly pheomelanin, which is barely present in any of the other hair colors. (The lack of melanin also puts redheads at a higher risk for skin cancer.)
“Hair color is a bit more complex than dominant and recessive and is related to variants in the MC1R gene,” says Dr. Kaplan. “There are nine variants described in this gene.”
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. If they only have one of the three variants, there is still a greater chance of red hair, though they may be more likely to have strawberry blond. The other six variants can lead to a range of blond to brown hair color.”
So while blondes may have more fun, redheads are halfway to having the rarest hair and eye color combination.
And it’s not just because of MC1R. According to a 2018 study published in Nature, the OCA2 gene, which is important for eye color, also interacts with the MC1R gene and can reduce your likelihood of having red hair.
Another fun fact about redheads? They have a fascinatingly high pain tolerance. “MC1R—the same gene that plays a large role in hair color—also modulates pain sensitivity,” Dr. Kaplan says. “Studies have shown that nonfunctional MC1R, as seen in redheads, yields a higher tolerance to electrical stimulation and increased sensitivity to cold and heat.”
The rarest eye color
Just as the MC1R gene determines your hair color, a single gene, OCA2, is 75% responsible for your eye color, Dr. Kaplan says.
For eye color, the OCA2 gene determines how much melanin is in the iris (the colorful ring around your pupil) by controlling how much P protein is produced. For people with blue eyes (considered a recessive trait), there’s very little P protein. “Two nonfunctional copies of OCA2 yield blue eyes,” says Dr. Kaplan. “If a person has two functional copies of OCA2, they are more likely to be on the spectrum of blue-green-hazel brown.”
But OCA2 isn’t the only gene that has a say in what color eyes you’re born with. There’s HERC2, a gene that controls how the OCA2 gene works, essentially turning P protein production on and off. And there are eight additional genes that play at least a small role in eye color, which makes determining what eye color any particular baby might have extremely hard—even if you try to base it on their parents or grandparents. A pair of blue-eyed parents can still have a brown-eyed child, depending on how all the genes interact.
So what’s the rarest eye color? According to an American Academy of Ophthalmology survey, green eyes are the rarest. Only 9% of Americans have green eyes, compared with 45% who have brown eyes and 27% who have blue eyes.
But it’s not quite that simple.
See, we like to think there’s a rainbow of eye color options out there—violet, blue, gray, hazel, green, brown, near-black—but scientists believe that they’re all slightly different manifestations of blue eyes or brown eyes. “It may seem like green is rare,” says Dr. Kaplan, “but there are many people who have green-brown eyes.”
The rarest hair and eye color combination
What are the rarest hair and eye color combinations? That’d be red hair with blue eyes.
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. That makes the blue eye and red hair combination even more unlikely to happen.
In addition, with both red hair and blue eyes being something akin to recessive traits, having parents that are able to pass on two sets of recessive genes is very unlikely. In most cases, you’d have blue eyes and hair somewhere on the spectrum of blond to brown, or red hair with brown, hazel or green eyes.
According to an article by evolutionary biology professor Mark Elgar, PhD, of the University of Melbourne, blue-eyed redheads are the absolute rarest, with 0.17% of the population having that combination of hair and eye color. So if that describes you, you’re most likely one in a million (or more!).
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FAQs
(Here are six foods that improve your eyesight.) The title of rarest hair colour/eye colour combination belongs to red haired folks with blue eyes. According to Medical Daily, both the blue eye trait and the red hair trait are recessive, so their likelihood of simultaneous appearance is pretty slim.
What is the rarest human color combination? ›
And when you meet a red head with blue eyes, you are looking at the rarest colour combination of all for human beings. Around 17 per cent of people have blue eyes, and when combined with 1-2 per cent having red hair, the odds of having both traits are around 0.17 per cent.
What is the most common hair and eye color combination? ›
Up to 85 percent of the population has dark hair and eyes, while only eight to ten percent have blue eyes, making this combination beyond unique. Thus, it's challenging to say where this combo is the most common, as it may occur in the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, and Europe.
What is the 2 rarest hair color? ›
2. Blonde hair. Blonde hair is the second rarest hair color in the world. About 2-3% of the population has blonde hair.
Is 2 different eye colors rare? ›
Heterochromia is fairly uncommon, occurring in less than 1 percent of the population. It can be caused by several factors and present itself in different ways. What causes Heterochromia? The color of our eyes comes from the appearance of the pigment that is present in the iris, the central part of the eye.
Is black hair blue eyes rare? ›
Black hair and blue eyes is a much more rare combination than is blonde hair and blue eyes. The reason why these two traits are linked is that the genes responsible for hair and eye color happen to be close together on the same chromosomes.
What's the rarest hair color? ›
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.
What's the rarest color? ›
Blue is one of the rarest of colors in nature. Even the few animals and plants that appear blue don't actually contain the color. These vibrant blue organisms have developed some unique features that use the physics of light.
What is the world's rarest color? ›
1. Lapis Lazuli. Lapus Lazuli is a blue mineral so rare that in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance it was actually more valuable than gold.
What's the rarest hair and eyes? ›
Red hair and green eye genes are simply not as common in populations as other hair and eye colors. One study found that the red hair-green eyes genetic combination is one of the rarest, at -0.14 correlation. Having red hair and blue eyes is even rarer.
Green eyes and blonde hair are a rare combination. The high concentration of green-eyed, blond-haired people in Liqian is thought to be linked to their ancestry.
What are 4 of the rarest eye colors? ›
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.
Is Strawberry blonde real? ›
Strawberry blonde is lighter than red hair. 'It's extremely rare for people to have hair that is naturally a strawberry blonde color. Basically, strawberry blonde is mostly based on red tones, with blonde highlights dotted here and there. It takes its name from the Italian renaissance.
Is golden hair rare? ›
Because blond hair tends to turn brown with age, natural blond hair is significantly less common in adulthood; according to the sociologist Christie Davies, only around five percent of adults in Europe and North America are naturally blond.
What's the rarest hair type? ›
Hair type 1A is super-straight. It doesn't even hold a curl! 1A is the rarest hair type. It is usually found on people of Asian descent.
Can I change my eye color? ›
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.
How rare is red eyes? ›
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.
Are brown eyes rare? ›
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.
Can blondes have brown eyes? ›
Is it possible for an adult with naturally blond hair to have brown eyes? Inheritance of eye color is more complicated than we had once thought. So the answer is yes, but the combination is extremely rare.
Are purple eyes the rarest? ›
The rarest eye color in the world is likely violet or red—and yes, those colors can occur without the help of contacts. Many factors can influence eye color, including genetics and even certain medical conditions.
While blue eyes may be rare, they're among the most common eye colours at birth. Since the human eye does not have its full adult amount of pigment at birth, most Caucasian babies are born with blue eyes.
Is black hair the rarest? ›
Black hair is the darkest and most common of all human hair colors globally, due to larger populations with this dominant trait. It is a dominant genetic trait, and it is found in people of all backgrounds and ethnicities.
How rare is grey eyes? ›
Gray eye color is one of the loveliest and most uncommon, a trait shared by only 3% of the world's population. The color and intensity of gray eyes varies from person to person and can include dark gray, gray-green and gray-blue.
Is dark brown hair rare? ›
The Most Common Hair Color – Darkest Brown/Black. The darkest brown hair color is often called “natural black hair” and it's the most widespread natural hair color in the world. A whopping 75% to 85% of the world was born with this hair color.
Is blue a very rare? ›
Blue is a very prominent colour on earth. But when it comes to nature, blue is very rare. Less than 1 in 10 plants have blue flowers and far fewer animals are blue.
Is blue a real colour? ›
One reason is that true blue colours or pigments simply don't exist in nature, and plants and animals have to perform tricks to appear blue, according to the University of Adelaide. Take blue jays for example, which only appear blue due to the structure of their feathers, which distort the reflection of light.
Is purple a real colour? ›
Purple, not to be confused with violet, is actually a large range of colors represented by the different hues created when red, blue, or violet light mix. Purple is a color mixture, whereas violet is a spectral color, meaning it consists of a single wavelength of light.
Are there really only 3 colors? ›
No set of real colorants or lights can mix all possible colors, however. In physics, the three primary colors are typically red, green and blue, after the different types of photoreceptor pigments in the cone cells.
Is purple a rare color? ›
An exotic colour at the far end of our visible spectrum and often associated with royalty, purple is relatively rare in nature.
What is the legendary color? ›
Legendary is a soft, gray, millennial beige with a silvery undertone. It is a perfect paint color for a living room or exterior home.
An eyelash (also called lash) (Latin: Cilia) is one of the hairs that grows at the edge of the eyelids. It grows in one layer on the edge of the upper and lower eyelids.
Why is red hair so rare? ›
Ever wonder why redheads make up less than 2% of the population? It's all about science, genes, and a little luck! Red hair occurs when the MC1R gene is present. This is a recessive gene that must be carried by both parents in order for a child to have red hair.
How rare is blonde hair? ›
Being naturally blonde is pretty rare.
Only 2 percent of people in the world are natural blondes. (About one in 20 Americans are.) But that doesn't mean it's not popular. One in three women dyes her locks light enough to be considered blonde.
Can green eyes change color? ›
As previously mentioned, exposure to light causes your body to produce more melanin. Even if your eye color has set, your eye color could slightly change if you expose your eyes to more sunlight. As a result, your eyes might appear a darker shade of brown, blue, green, or gray, depending on your current eye color.
Can Asians have blue eyes? ›
Blue eyes are also found in southern Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa and West Asia.
What are the 6 rarest eye colors? ›
The Rarest Eye Colors and How They Occur
| Eye Color | Cause(s) |
|---|
| Red/Pink | Albinism and blood leaking into the iris |
| Amber | A little melanin with a large amount of lipochrome |
| Green | A little melanin, a bunch of lipochrome and Rayleigh scattering of light |
| Violet | Lack of pigment mixed with light reflecting off of red blood vessels |
2 more rowsAbout 27% of Americans have blue eyes, making it the third rarest eye color.
Do purple eyes exist? ›
Yes, natural purple eyes are possible. There are many different shades of blues and greys out there and many in-between colors. Although very rare, some people's natural pigmentation can even be violet or purple in color.
What color is honey blonde? ›
Honey blonde hair is a warm, golden shade with hints of amber, blonde, chestnut, light brown and even a little bit of red. It's a warm blonde shade but don't mistake it for orange or brassy blonde color.
What color is dirty blonde hair? ›
Dirty blonde is unlike your typical squeaky clean blonde shades like platinum and champagne. The hue is a medium to dark blonde shade with wheaty, brown undertones (hence, the word dirt in the name). These hints of brunette make dirty blonde dimensional and low-maintenance—what more could you want?
So what does that all mean for your chances of having a red-headed child? Since you need two pieces of “red hair” DNA to have red hair, your child will only have red hair if they receive “red hair” DNA from both parents. Even if you don't have red hair, you can still pass on a red hair allele to your child!
Do blondes go GREY? ›
While the study concluded that the average age for a woman to go grey is 33, it found redheads lose their colour at 30, brunettes at 32 and blondes at 35. For one in 10 women, those first grey hairs appear by the time they reach 21-years-old, while one in four women find their first grey by the age of 25.
Why was I blonde as a kid? ›
Changes in hair color in kids and teenagers are most likely due to changing hormones. Hormones are chemical signals that the body uses to send messages between body parts. Changes in hormone levels can cause pigment genes to be turned on or turned off. This can happen in adults too!
Does baby's hair color change? ›
After age 3, hair color became progressively darker until age 5. This just means that your baby's hair may change shades a few times after birth before settling on a more permanent color.
How rare is curly hair? ›
Yes, only 11% of the population have curly hair.
How rare is straight hair? ›
Main Text. Hair morphology is one of the more conspicuous features of human variation and is particularly diverse among people of European ancestry, for which around 45% of individuals have straight hair, 40% have wavy hair, and 15% have curly hair.
Does golden hair exist? ›
Blond hair
More pheomelanin creates a more golden or strawberry blond color, and more eumelanin creates an ash or sandy blond color. Blond hair is most commonly found in Northern and Northeastern Europeans and their descendants but can be found spread around most of Europe.
What is the prettiest eye color? ›
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.
What is the 3rd rarest eye color? ›
About 27% of Americans have blue eyes, making it the third rarest eye color.
Is black eye color rare? ›
Blue is the second most common and brown tops the list with 45% of the U.S. population and possibly almost 80% worldwide. Black is not an eye color.
...
Gray: The Rarest Eye Color.
| EYE COLOR | U.S. POPULATION | WORLD POPULATION |
|---|
| Brown | 45% | 55% to 79% |
4 more rows23 Nov 2022
Only 8 Percent of the World's Population Has Blue Eyes
Since blue eyes are genetically recessive, only 8 percent of the world's population has blue eyes. While blue eyes are significantly less common than brown eyes worldwide, they are frequently found from nationalities located near the Baltic Sea in northern Europe.
How rare is purple eyes? ›
Are Purple Eyes Rare? 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.
Can two blue eyes make brown? ›
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.
Are yellow eyes real? ›
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. Normally, it's not a problem.
Is Red Eye is rare? ›
Red eye is a common problem that can affect one or both eyes. The redness associated with red eye comes from blood vessels on the surface of your eye that are expanded (dilated) due to some form of irritation or infection.
