What is the rarest eye colour in the world? (2024)

FAQs

What is the rarest eye colour in the world? ›

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 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.

Brown eyes have the most melanin, and blue eyes have the least amount of melanin. The amount of melanin in green irises is somewhere between blue eyes and brown eyes. This amount is the least common you can have.

What's the most common eye color? The most common eye color is brown. More than half of the world's population has brown eyes (some experts include amber as a shade of brown, too).

Red and violet

Although the deep blue eyes of some people such as Elizabeth Taylor can appear purple or violet at certain times, "true" violet-colored eyes occur only due to albinism. Eyes that appear red or violet under certain conditions due to albinism are less than 1 percent of the world's population.

One thing these survey results have in common is that light-colored eyes — green, gray, blue, and hazel — are named as the most attractive eye colors in the world. In one large survey of more than 66,000 people, green was chosen as the most attractive eye color.

Gray: The Rarest Eye Color

New classifications have determined that gray is its own standard color.1 (It was previously, and incorrectly, lumped in with blue.) With this change, gray now tops the list as the rarest eye color.

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!

2. 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.

Of the less common eye colors, pink and red eyes are considered to be the most unique in the world, giving new meaning to the word “rare.” Only one in every 20,000 people have a form of albinism, according to the National Institutes of Health, and even fewer have red-tinted eyes.

Who had purple eyes? ›

For those too young to remember, Elizabeth Taylor was a beautiful movie star. In her heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s — long before colored contact lenses were available — she was famous for her supposedly violet eyes. In fact, her eyes were dark blue but in a specific lighting, they looked violet.

Natural red hair is the rarest hair color in the world. A mere one to two percent of people are born with auburn hair. The prevalence is slightly higher in the northern and western fringes of Europe, especially the British Isles (mainly Ireland and Scotland), than in the rest of the world.

The vast majority of people in the world have brown eyes. The second most common color is blue, but people can also have green, gray, amber, or red eyes. Some people have eyes that are different colors than each other.

If you notice one of the grandparents has blue eyes, the chances of having a blue-eyed baby go up a bit. If one parent has brown eyes and the other has blue eyes, odds are about even on eye color.

The vast majority of people in the world have brown eyes. The second most common color is blue, but people can also have green, gray, amber, or red eyes.

The iris has pigmentation that determines the eye color. 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.

Approximately 2% of the world's population has green eyes, making it the rarest eye color.

Gray eyes are also uncommon. It's estimated that 3% of the world's population has this eye color. Scientists believe that gray eyes develop in a similar way to blue eyes, but there is enough melanin in the front layer of the iris to make the eyes look gray rather than blue.