Baby Hair Color Predictor: What Hair Color Awaits | SneakPeek (2024)

Medically Reviewed by Katie Smith, MSN, APRN, CNM. Our commitment to providing technically accurate, evidence-based information is upheld through review by credentialed doctors with expertise in relevant medical fields.

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Will you have redhead babies? it’s not common yet also not impossible, even for those parents without red hair themselves. A baby’s hair color can change over time too. You yourself may have gone from blonde to brunette or from dark brown hair to light during your childhood. So as more locks grow in, the question that’s always hanging is, “What color will my baby’s hair be?”

What’s Below:

1. How Hair Color Works
2. What Makes Hair Color What It Is?
3. Genetics and Their Role in Hair Color
4. Why Does a Baby’s Hair Color Change?
5. When Does a Baby’s Hair Color Change?
6. The Truth About Dominant and Recessive Genes
7. How to Tell If Baby’s Hair Color Will Change

How Hair Color Works

Hair has a simple structure composed of three critical parts: hair shaft, hair cuticle, and hair bulb. The hair shaft is the visible part of the hair that protrudes from the skin. The hair shaft is anchored just beneath thescalp surface thanks to the hair follicle. At the base of the hair follicle sits the hair bulb, which is where living cells divide and create the hair shaft. One type of cell inside the hair bulb directly impacts permanent hair color:

• Melanocytes– Melanocytes are melanin-producing cells that affect bodily pigments including skin, eye, and hair color. As people age, the melanocytes in their hair bulb die, leaving hair shafts gray.

Melanocytes inject the melanin (or pigment) into keratinocytes, which are cells that create keratin. Keratin is the protein that makes up hair, skin, and nails. The melanin that’s inside the hair’s keratin is how hair gets its color.

There are different types of melanin that can change the color of hair:

• Eumelanin is the most prevalent melanin in the human body. This results in black and brown tones and gives pigment to both skin and hair.

• Pheomelanin results in red tones. This melanin is present not only in hair but also gives our lips their pink hue.

What Makes Hair Color What It Is?

What determines hair color is the amount and type of melanin produced by melanocytes. While eumelanin dictates how dark the hair is, pheomelanin controls how red the hair is.

• Someone with dark brown or black hair has up to 95% eumelaninin their hair follicles. However, that doesn’t mean they lack pheomelanin. This lighter, red pigment may be covered up entirely under dark hair, or it may give brown hair a reddish hue in some lights.
• Blonde hair occurs in people who have little eumelanin—but don’t have much pheomelanin, either.
• A red haired personhas more pheomelanin than eumelanin. The amount of eumelanin does affect what type of red hair. Auburn hair, for example, has more eumelanin than strawberry blonde hair, which has more eumelanin than fiery red hair.

The whole spectrum of human hair color from champagne blonde to fiery red to charcoal black can be explained by the levels of these two varieties of melanin.

Genetics and Their Role in Hair Color

Put simply, genes impact how much of each type of melanin is produced within the hair follicles.

The melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) is a key protein that determines which kind of melanin (eumelanin or pheomelanin) melanocytes produce at the root of the hair bulb.

As you may recall from high school biology, genes come in alternate forms (called alleles). These MCR1 alleles work together to form hair color:

• Most people have two functioning MC1R genes (one from each parent). When this gene is “on,” it stimulates the production of eumelanin. Having two functioning alleles is so common, 90% of people have brown hair.

• Some people have one MC1R gene that is “off.” This deactivated gene results in less production of eumelanin. This can result in lighter shades of hair, like blonde hair.

• If both copies of the MC1R gene are off, this results in little to no eumelanin production. Should there be an abundance of pheomelanin, people with this genetic profile will have red hair.

Mentioned above, this is just one gene out of many that determine hair color. Scientists have found up to a dozen genes that play some role in a person’s locks—though the individual gene’s level of involvement is still being understood.

Why Does a Baby’s Hair Color Change?

After birth, baby hair is now exposed to a new source of energy. The sun. This new source may affect babys’eye color[MS1], skin tone (e.g., tanning), and his hair color.

While the sun directly impacts vitamin D production, it’s not straightforward why sunlight would cause your baby’s hair to darken over time. After all, sunlight’s UV radiation is known to bleach hair by oxidizing melanin and stripping its color.

While we don’t fully understand the reasons why light hair tends to darken over time, scientists theorize that changing hormone levels regulate the production of both eumelanin and pheomelanin, increasing the amount of eumelanin produced over time.

When Does a Baby’s Hair Color Change?

Similar to when a baby’s hair texture changes, when a baby’s hair color will change can depend on a few factors. Both baby boy and girl hair can change color through their first few birthdays. Though, by the age of 5, most children will have their adult hair color. However, in some cases, continued eumelanin production can increase over time, darkening hair well into adolescence.

So when does a baby’s hair change color? It’s hard to say exactly when. But the factors involved include: hair color genetics, sun exposure, and nutrition (though genetics play the most significant role). As your child’s hair changes over months and years, you’ll go on a journey of discovery together.

The Truth About Dominant and Recessive Genes

You may have learned in high school that traits like hair color, eye color, and more are determined by dominant and recessive genes. For hair color, the theory goes:

• Each parent carries two alleles (gene variants) for hair color. Blonde hair is a recessive gene and brown hair is a dominant gene.

• A brunette may have two brown hair alleles or one brown allele and one blonde allele. However, a blonde person must have two recessive blonde genes.

• 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.

• Because blonde people carry only the recessive blonde genes, they can only have blonde children.

However, as you now know, it’s more complicated than that. After all, this “Punnett Square” model only considers the alleles that regulate the amount of eumelanin produced (MC1R). It doesn’t acknowledge the SLC7A11 gene which controls pheomelanin production and red hair, or any other genes.

Because more than one gene is involved in hair color, a simple theory of dominant and recessive traits doesn’t quite capture the whole picture. You might not know your baby’s hair color yet, but you may find more answers than you ever thought possible with SneakPeek. For a deeper dive into the fascinating traits inherited from your mother, check out our detailed genetics blog.

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This post has been reviewed for accuracy by the following medical professional:

Sources:

• WebMD. Picture of the hair. https://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/picture-of-the-hair – 1
• Genetics Home Reference. Is hair color determined by genetics? https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/haircolor
• The Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology. Diversity of human hair pigmentation as studied by chemical analysis of eumelanin and pheomelanin. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22077870
• Stanford @ The Tech. Other traits. https://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask180
• Photochemistry and Photobiology. Spectrophotometric Methods for Quantifying Pigmentation in Human Hair—Influence of MC1R Genotype and Environment. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-1097.2007.00237.x
• American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Sex and genetic differences in hair color changes during early childhood. https://europepmc.org/article/med/1167738

SneakPeek aims to provide the most accurate and up-to-date information to help our readers make informed decisions regarding their health before, during, and after pregnancy. This article was written based upon trusted scientific research studies and/or articles. Credible information sources for this article are cited and hyperlinked.