Your eye color is determined by the genetic information passed on from your parents.

Eye color charts used to be an integral part of “predicting” a child’s eye color. Simplified versions of these charts designate brown eyes as the dominant shade over green and blue eyes. Green eyes are deemed as dominant over blue eyes.

These concepts may generally be true, but the genetic concepts of how your eye color is inherited from your parents are complex ideas. You can come from a family with a long line of brown eyes and still turn up with blue or green eyes. And vice versa; it is also possible that two green eyed parents can have a child with brown eyes.

Pigment (melanin) presence and distribution in the iris are key in the mystery behind eye color. It has been scientifically understood that light gray-blue eyes have less pigment than brown eyes.

The percentage of eye colors usually vary according to which population is being studied. Obviously, Asia and Africa have higher numbers of brown eyed individuals, compared to those in European nations.

Blue eyes are becoming rarer. This probably comes as no surprise, if you consider that blue is the most recessive of all colors. The more cultures mix, the more rare blue eyes will become, because offspring is increasingly likely to inherit brown eyes.