How to read the chart
Every eye color on the chart comes from the same single pigment — melanin — and differs only by how much of it sits in the iris and how light scatters through the tissue. Lots of melanin gives brown; very little gives blue or gray; a middling amount, combined with a gold or yellow pigment called lipochrome, produces green, hazel, and amber. That’s why the chart runs on a spectrum from dark to light rather than in tidy separate boxes.
Ranked from most common to rarest
- Brown (~70–79%) — the world’s default, high-melanin color.
- Blue (~8–10%) — a structural color, most common in Northern Europe.
- Hazel (~5%) — a shifting brown-green mix.
- Amber (~5%) — a solid golden tone often mistaken for hazel.
- Green (~2%) — the rarest common color.
- Gray (<1%) — rarer than green, and not just “light blue.”
- Red / violet (≪1%) — essentially unique to albinism.
For the full breakdown of where each color clusters and why, see our rarest eye color ranking.
Sub-shades within each color
A single “color” on the chart hides a lot of variety. This is where most people discover their eyes are more specific than they thought:
- Brown — honey, chestnut, coffee, near-black.
- Blue — ice blue, sky, steel/gray-blue, deep sapphire.
- Green — emerald, olive, sea-green, green with an amber inner ring.
- Hazel — brown-dominant, green-dominant, and the classic split ring.
- Amber — golden, copper, honey, and rare red-amber.
- Gray — silver, blue-gray, and gray with gold flecks.
Why the percentages differ between charts
If you compare two eye color charts, the numbers rarely match exactly — and that’s expected. Because color is a continuum, the line between “light brown” and “hazel,” or “blue” and “gray,” is a judgment call. Different studies use different categories and sample different regions. What stays consistent is the ranking: brown is always the most common; green and gray are always near the bottom.
Your color depends on where in the world you look
A global average hides huge regional differences. In East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, brown is near-universal (98–99%). In Northern Europe, blue and gray eyes can outnumber brown. In the United States, the mix is unusually even — roughly 45% brown, 27% blue/gray, and 28% green/hazel — because of its blended ancestry. Our eye color genetics guide has the full regional table and the reason behind it.
Find exactly where you land
A chart tells you the categories; it can’t tell you your precise shade. The MyEye scanner photographs your iris, names your exact color and sub-shade — down to details like a gold inner ring or a gray rim — and tells you what percentage of people share it.