How Does a Person Get their Eye Color?

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The LASIK eye doctors in Los Angeles told us that we get our eye color from melanin, the same compound that influences hair and skin color. Melanin absorbs light, even some UV light, which is crucial for the iris, which is the part of the eye that controls how much light enters the pupil.

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What’s Melanin and Its Pigment Types

The best LASIK surgeons in Los Angeles inform us that there are two different types of melanin someone could have in their irises: eumelanin, which creates a rich chocolate brown color, and pheomelanin, which makes an assortment of amber, green, or hazel colors. In contrast, blue eyes get their color from having very little eumelanin. The pigment itself isn’t blue, but the way the light disperses around the front layer of the iris ends up appearing blue. This is the very same way the sky looks blue!

When LASIK surgeons see a patient with green eyes, they know it’s a mix of both types of melanin in enough low levels also to get a little scattering effect. Hazel eyes have ample melanin that they don’t receive the light scattering effect. Red and violet eyes, which are very rare, come from not having melanin at all, and what you are witnessing is the color of the underlying blood vessels, or it mixes with the light scattering effect to make violet. Commonly, this is found in albinism. 

 

How Common Are Different Eye Colors

Throughout the entire world, many people have different eye colors. The LASIK eye doctors in Los Angeles point out that the most common eye color is brown.

  • 70-79% of individuals have brown eyes.
  • 8-10% of people have blue eyes.
  • 5% of us have hazel eyes.
  • 5% of people have amber (very light brown) eyes.
  • 3% of people in the world have gray eyes.
  • 2% of us have green eyes.
  • Less than 1% of the world’s population has red or violet eyes.
  • Less than 1% of the world’s population has heterochromia (partly or entirely different-colored eyes).

 

Eye Color Genetics Is A Complex Process

Previously, there used to be a belief that eye color is fixed on just a single gene, but recently scientists have found that it’s actually genes working together, and small changes to any of those genes can lead to different eye colors. Also, two genes are strongly linked with eye color, but as many as sixteen have some role. As a result of this, it isn’t easy to know ahead of time what a child’s eye color is going to be based on their parents. For instance, blue-eyed parents will not always create only blue-eyed children. 

 

What Are The “Baby Blues”?

Many LASIK patients in Los Angeles who receive the best laser eye surgery talk about the fact that when they were babies, they had blue eyes but changed color when they got older. This is actually true, and many babies are born with blue or grey eyes but form a different eye color as they get older. Typically this occurs in Caucasian babies. A baby doesn’t always have their permanent eye color yet when they’re born because the cells that create melanin sometimes require light to set off melanin production, which usually doesn’t happen until after they’re born. 

 

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