How Long Do Babies Eyes Stay Blue?
At birth your baby’s eyes may appear gray or blue due to a lack of pigment. Once exposed to light, the eye color will most likely start to change to blue, green, hazel, or brown over a period of six months to one year.
How can I tell if my baby’s eyes will stay blue?
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. who also have blue eyes increase the odds of a blue-eyed baby too. (North adds that there is no truth to the myth that keeping your baby in the dark for the first few months will mean they keep their blue eyes!)
At what age do babies blue eyes turn brown?
Are All Babies Born with Blue Eyes? – You’ve probably heard that all babies are born with blue eyes—but experts say it’s a myth. “Babies are born with all different colored eyes. Some have dark eyes already and some have blue,” says Mohamad S. Jaafar, MD, a pediatric ophthalmologist and chief of the division of ophthalmology at Children’s National Health System in Washington, DC.
It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but Caucasian babies tend to be born with lighter eyes, while those of African-American, Asian and Hispanic descent are usually born with brown or dark brown eyes, even eyes that look black. 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. Louis Children’s Hospital. As a general rule of thumb, baby eye color tends to get darker if it changes.
Do all 2 month olds have blue eyes?
– From very first eye contact, you were mesmerized by your baby’s eyes — and every other trait, too. If you were startled to see blue eyes staring back at you, we hope we’ve eliminated some of the surprise you might otherwise experience later if those same eyes are brown.
- Melanin determines several aspects of our appearance.
- 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.
As with everything else involving your newborn, enjoy each stage as it comes — yes, even the ” terrible twos ” — and know that eye, skin, and hair color will become things that make your child uniquely beautiful.
When can you tell a baby’s eye color?
When Is Eye Color Set? – Permanent eye color is not set until a baby is at least 9 months old, so wait until your child’s first birthday to determine what color they will be. Even then, sometimes you may find little surprises. Subtle color changes can still occur all the way up until about 6 years of age.
For example, green eyes may slowly turn hazel or hazel may slowly grow to a darker brown. An infant’s eye color is influenced by the eye color of their parents. Eye color is often studied in the field of genetics because of its inheritance patterns but is still not fully understood. Eye color inheritance patterns are much more complicated than what we learn in basic genetics taught in high school biology.
Your baby’s final eye color depends a lot on you and your co-parent. We used to think that brown was dominant and blue was recessive. But modern science has shown that eye color is not at all that simple. Eye color is controlled by three basic genes. Researchers understand two of those genes really well, and one of them is still a bit of a mystery.
Will my 3 month old’s eyes stay blue?
How can I tell if my baby’s eyes will stay blue? – 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.
Until then, there’s no way to know for certain what color your baby’s eyes will ultimately be. And while it isn’t entirely foolproof, a pretty good indicator of whether or not your child’s eye color will change is to inspect their eyes from the side. If their eyes are clear and bright blue, they may stay that way.
If their eyes are a darker blue and there are flecks of gold throughout, they may change to hazel, green or brown.
How can you tell if babies blue eyes will turn brown?
Can You Tell if Baby’s Eyes Are Going to Change Color? – As noted above, if baby is born with brown eyes, he/she will almost certainly have those brown eyes for life. If baby has blue eyes, this simple (but not foolproof!) trick can help determine whether or not they’ll stay that way. ()
- Look at baby’s eye from the side to eliminate any light reflecting off the iris.
- If there are flecks of gold in the blue of the eye, your baby’s eyes will likely change to either green or brown as they grow.
- If there are minimal or no flecks of gold, it’s less likely your baby’s eye color will change much.
Another indicator? If baby’s eyes are clear, bright blue, they are most likely staying blue. If they are a darker, cloudier blue, they are most likely going to change to hazel, brown, or a darker color. Get free updates on baby’s first year! – Free Updates on First Year
Do all babies have blue eyes beginning?
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.
Why are so many babies born with blue eyes?
Melanin, which is the brown pigment that provides color to our skin and eyes, has not been fully deposited in our eyes as a newborn baby. As a baby’s eyes are exposed to light, the melanin production is started in the iris. The iris is the colored part of the eyes that regulates how much light enters our pupils.
Can 2 blue eyed parents have a brown eyed child?
Can two parents with blue eyes have a child with brown eyes? Yes, blue-eyed parents can definitely have a child with brown eyes. Or green or hazel eyes for that matter. If you stayed awake during high school biology, you might find this answer surprising.
- We were all taught that parents with blue eyes have kids with blue eyes.
- Every time.
- This has to do with the fact that blue eyes are supposed to be recessive to brown eyes.
- This means that if a parent has a brown eye gene, then that parent will have brown eyes.
- Which makes it impossible for two blue-eyed parents to have a brown-eyed child – they don’t have a brown eye gene to pass on! In fact, this is the model we used for our eye color calculator.* And that we talk about extensively here at Ask a Geneticist.
Blue-eyed parents can have kids with brown eyes. (Image via Shutterstock) Now we aren’t being dishonest or trying to hide anything by presenting this model. It works great most of the time. But as with anything genetic, there are always exceptions. For example, DNA can and does change between generations.
- So if a change happened that turned a blue eye color gene into a brown one, then blue-eyed parents could have a brown-eyed child.
- As you might guess, this sort of thing is pretty rare.
- Too rare to explain all the exceptions we see with eye color.
- So something else must be going on.
- That something is most likely other genes involved in eye color that we don’t know about.
Eye color used to be presented as a fairly simple trait. A big part of the model was the idea that we had an eye color gene that came in two varieties – brown and blue. Geneticists represented the brown version as “B” and the blue version as “b”. The model also said that blue (b) was recessive to brown (B).
This matters because it is an explanation for how brown-eyed parents can have a blue-eyed child. See, we have two copies of each of our genes – one from each biological parent. This means there are three possible combinations for this eye color gene: BB, Bb, and bb. BB is of course brown and in this model, bb would be blue.
Since blue is recessive to brown, Bb people have brown eyes. But they can pass a “b” down to their kids, who might end up with blue eyes. Now eye color is obviously more complicated than this. This model doesn’t explain green eyes for example. Scientists added a second gene to try to explain green eyes but we don’t need to go into that here ( to learn more about the two-gene model).
| Genes | What it Means |
| BB | Brown eyes |
| B b | Brown eyes |
| bb | Not brown eyes |
Again, bb people should not be able to pass on brown eyes to their kids. But we know they can. Which means that this model is incomplete (or wrong). The results I just put into the previous table are theoretical and based on the model I talked about. Here are some actual results I adapted from ‘s website:
| Genes | What it Means in Europeans |
| BB |
|
| B b |
|
| bb |
|
As you can see, the original model holds up pretty well for BB and bb people. Most BB people have brown eyes and most bb people don’t. But the model clearly doesn’t explain the following:
- 1% of bb people have brown eyes
- 1% of BB people have blue eyes (and 14% have green)
- 44% of Bb people do not have brown eyes
The biggest disconnect is with Bb people. Only 56% have brown eyes. If this holds up, I am not sure we can even call blue and green recessive to brown. Whatever the reason, these data give some clues about how two blue-eyed parents might have a brown-eyed child.
- For example, imagine two parents are Bb and have blue eyes.
- They each pass a B down to one of their children.
- That child will be BB and most likely have brown eyes.
- This example uses known data to show how blue-eyed parents might have a child with brown eyes.
- But it doesn’t explain why a Bb person has blue eyes in the first place.
To do this, we need to guess what other genes may be doing. And how they might be affecting the original eye color gene. Going into detail about these possibilities would need more space than I have here! And in the end, the truth is that eye color is a complex trait that we don’t fully understand yet.
Can blue eyes turn brown in sunlight?
Why did my blue eyes turn brown? – As previously mentioned, exposure to light causes your body to produce more melanin. Even if your eye color has set, your eye color could slightly change if you expose your eyes to more sunlight. As a result, your eyes might appear a darker shade of brown, blue, green, or gray, depending on your current eye color. |
Can babies dark blue eyes get lighter?
– 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.
What eye color is most common for a baby?
Newborn iris color at birth is brown in 63.0% (121/192) of infants, blue in 20.8% (40/192) of infants, green/hazel in 5.7% (11/192) of infants, indeterminate in 9.9% (19/192) of infants and partially heterochromic in 0.5% (1/192) of infants.
How often do newborns need a bath?
How often does my newborn need a bath? – There’s no need to give your newborn baby a bath every day. Three times a week might be enough until your baby becomes more mobile. Bathing your baby too much can dry out your baby’s skin. If you’re quick and thorough with diaper changes and burp cloths, you’re already cleaning the parts that need attention — the face, neck and diaper area.
Will my 6 month old keep his blue eyes?
What Color Eyes Are Babies Born With? – 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.
- Since melanocytes respond to light, at birth a baby may have eyes that appear gray or blue mostly due to the lack of pigment and because he’s been in a dark womb up until now.
- As he’s exposed to more light, over time (even several years) his eye color can change.
- If the melanocytes secrete just a little more melanin, this baby may end up with blue eyes.
Just a little more melanin and his eyes will be green or hazel. Brown eyes, which are the most common, are the result of very active melanocytes secreting lots of melanin. Brown eyes are likely to remain brown throughout life. It takes about a year for the melanocytes to finish their job and for the final color to come in.
Why was I born with blue eyes but now have brown?
What is Melanin? – Melanin is a pigment that darkens the eyes, hair and skin. When babies are born, they don’t have melanin in their irises yet. However, they develop more melanin in their first weeks and months of life. This is why you’ll see the blue eyes change.
Why did my eyes change from blue to brown as a baby?
– Melanin, a type of pigment that contributes to your hair and skin color, also plays a role in iris color. While some baby’s eyes are blue or gray at birth, as the study above noted, many are brown from the start. As melanocytes in the iris respond to light and secrete melanin, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says the color of a baby’s irises will begin to change.
Eyes that are a darker shade from birth tend to stay dark, while some eyes that began a lighter shade will also darken as melanin production increases. This typically occurs over their first year of life, with the color change slowing down after 6 months. A small amount of melanin results in blue eyes, but increase the secretion and baby may end up with green or hazel eyes.
If your baby has brown eyes, you can thank the hardworking melanocytes for secreting a lot of melanin to produce a darker color. “It’s the melanin granules deposited in our iris that gives us our eye color,” says Bert. And the more melanin you have, the darker your eyes become.
What color will blue baby eyes turn?
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Eye color isn’t set in stone until age 2. (Image credit: sxc.hu, user ‘maplec’) While only 1 in 5 Caucasian adults have blue eyes in the United States, most are born blue-eyed. Their irises change from blue to hazel or brown during infancy. Why? “It has to do with the amount of melanin they’re born with and how that melanin increases after birth,” said Norman Saffra, Chairman of Ophthalmology at Maimonedes Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Melanin, Saffra explained, is a pigment, and the more you have of it in your eyes, hair and skin, the darker they are, and thus the more sunlight they reflect. A small deposit of melanin in the irises — the muscular rings around the pupils — makes them appear blue, while a medium amount makes them green or hazel, and a lot of it makes the irises brown.
Babies aren’t born with all the melanin they are destined to have. “The maturation process continues post-utero,” Saffra told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site of LiveScience. “Eye color isn’t set until 2 years of age.” He likened the gradual buildup of melanin in the irises to chicks developing feathers after birth.
- Though some babies of non-white ethnicities also have blue eyes at birth which then brown over time, the effect is far less common than with Caucasian babies.
- Darkly-pigmented individuals usually have brown-eyed babies, because the babies have more pigment to start out with,” Saffra said.
- Original article on Live Science,
Natalie Wolchover was a staff writer for Live Science from 2010 to 2012 and is currently a senior physics writer and editor for Quanta Magazine. She holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Tufts University and has studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Along with the staff of Quanta, Wolchover won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory writing for her work on the building of the James Webb Space Telescope. Her work has also appeared in the The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best Writing on Mathematics, Nature, The New Yorker and Popular Science.
She was the 2016 winner of the Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for young science journalists, as well as the winner of the 2017 Science Communication Award for the American Institute of Physics.
What percentage of babies keep their blue eyes?
Newborn iris color at birth is brown in 63.0% (121/192) of infants, blue in 20.8% (40/192) of infants, green/hazel in 5.7% (11/192) of infants, indeterminate in 9.9% (19/192) of infants and partially heterochromic in 0.5% (1/192) of infants.