Your child's newborn eye color may be blue, but that doesn't mean it'll necessarily stay that way. “Babies' eyes tend to change color sometime between 6 and 12 months, but it can take as long as three years until you see the true color of what their eyes are going to be,” says Barbara Cohlan, MD, a neonatologist at St.
In most people, the answer is no. Eye color fully matures in infancy and remains the same for life. But in a small percentage of adults, eye color can naturally become either noticeably darker or lighter with age. What determines eye color is the pigment melanin.
Will my baby's eyes stay blue? You can't tell for sure, but if you and your partner both have blue eyes, your baby is more likely to have blue eyes too. Grandparents who also have blue eyes increase the odds of a blue-eyed baby too.
Although you can't predict the exact age your baby's eye color will be permanent, the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) says most babies have the eye color that will last their lifetime by the time they're about 9 months old. However, some can take up to 3 years to settle into a permanent eye color.
Generally, baby eye color changes take place around 6 months old — but this isn't a set rule by any means. Your baby's eye color may continue to change up until 9 months to a year old. Some children even experience eye color changes until 3 years of age.
Research has found that most children's eyes will stop changing color when they're around 6 years old. But about 15% of people have changes in eye color all their life because of their genetic makeup.
Blue eyes at birth doesn't mean blue eyes for life
So don't be concerned if your child begins to lose their baby-blue eye color. It's completely normal to see blue become brown, hazel, or even green as they get a little older. This color transition can take anywhere from a few months to three years to run its course.
Advantages of Blue Eyes
A big advantage to blue eyes is that research shows they might be linked to a lower risk of developing cataracts. Cataracts are clouding of the eye's lens. According to some studies, blue eyes may have evolved because these individuals were able to cope better with seasonal affective disorders.
World Atlas notes that only 8% to 10% of the global population has blue eyes. Violet eyes are even rarer, but they're a bit misleading; someone with “violet” irises is usually sporting a special shade of blue.
Green Eyes
Green is considered by some to be the actual rarest eye color in the world, though others would say it's been dethroned by red, violet, and grey eyes.
Yes. The short answer is that brown-eyed parents can have kids with brown, blue or virtually any other color eyes.
However, eye color changes can also occur as a person ages. Those with lighter color eyes – especially Caucasians – may see their eyes lighten over time. The pigment slow degrades over time, resulting in less color. Since melanin plays a role in eye color, exposure to the sun can lead to eye color changes.
Aging & Myopia
Changes in prescription often slow down about the age of 20, when our eyes begin to stop growing. Many people will not experience an increasing degree of myopia as they exit their 20s, but diagnosis as a child will usually remain with someone their whole life.
The myth stops here
And while we have the least amount when we enter the world for the first time, remember that babies may be born with eyes of blue, brown, hazel, green, or some other color. It's simply a myth that all of us — or most of us, for that matter — are blue-eyed at birth.
But it can take a while for the cell to ramp up to the final levels of pigment. That is why so many babies have blue eyes for their first months of life. Usually by their first birthday, a baby's eye color has settled in (although it can sometimes take three years or even longer).
About half of Americans born at the turn of the 20th century had blue eyes, according to a 2002 Loyola University study in Chicago. By mid-century that number had dropped to a third. Today only about one 1 of every 6 Americans has blue eyes, said Mark Grant, the epidemiologist who conducted the study.
There's always a chance that your baby's blue eyes will be permanent, but it's more likely they'll become hazel, green or brown before they even take their first steps. Eye color change will often taper off around six months, but some babies' eyes keep changing hues for a year or even up to three.
The color of babies' irises actually depends on melanin, a protein secreted by special cells called melanocytes that also give your baby's skin its color. Babies whose heritage is dark-skinned are usually born with brown eyes, whereas Caucasian newborns tend to be born with blue or gray eyes.
Are All Babies Born With Blue Eyes? It's a common belief that all babies are born with blue eyes, but this is actually a myth. A baby's eye colour at birth depends on genetics. Brown is also common, for example, but a newborn baby's eyes can range in colour from slate grey to black.
Each parent will pass one copy of their eye color gene to their child. In this case, the mom will always pass B and the dad will always pass b. This means all of their kids will be Bb and have brown eyes. Each child will show the mom's dominant trait.
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.
Blue eyes. This is the next most common eye color, encompassing about 10% of the population. While blue eyes are more sensitive to light during the day, people with blue eyes tend to see better at night – unless there are bright lights.
Lighter-colored eyes have less pigment to protect against sun damage and UV radiation compared to darker-colored eyes. This means that people with green, hazel, or blue eyes are more sensitive to light and more susceptible to UV damage.
Did Elizabeth Taylor have violet eyes? These days, thanks to colored contact lenses, anyone can have violet-colored eyes . Taylor didn't come by her purple peepers that way; the first tinted contact lenses weren't commercially available until 1983. Taylor's eye color was the real deal.