How Common Is Your Natural Hair Color?
From platinum blonde to bold cherry red, you can dye your hair pretty much any color you want nowadays. Honey chestnut, muted auburn, and icy silver were among the trending hair dye colors in 2022, according to Good Housekeeping, but have you ever thought about how popular your natural hair color is?
Just as with hair dye, natural hair can come in many different shades, but News-Medical.net claims there are four main natural (from birth) hair colors: brown, blond, black, and red. Our hair color is determined by our genes, but, more specifically, it's determined by the amount of melanin (pigment) in those genes, as MedlinePlus explains.
The two types of hair pigment are eumelanin and pheomelanin. Eumelanin is responsible for black and dark-brown hair color, so the more of this pigment that you have, the darker your hair will be. Pheomelanin is the pigment that contributes to red, auburn, or strawberry blond hair color. Can you guess which hair color is the most common and which one is the rarest?
70% of people were born with the same hair color
World Atlas claims that about 70% of the world's population has black hair. The United States is a mixed bag when it comes to natural hair color, due to the large percentage of immigrants (via Visual Capitalist). About 50 million residents were born in another country, but there are two colors that are more common than the others: black and brown. According to World Population Review, 85% of people in the United States have black hair while 11% have brown hair.
Outside of the U.S., the data is similar. Most inhabitants in Africa and Asia also have black or brown hair. Russia, France, and Switzerland also have regions where most of the inhabitants are dark-haired, and in Latin America, you'll find more of the same.
But what about the blond-haired folks? Where do they rank? Blond comes in third place in the list of most common hair colors. According to Inc., "only 2% of the world's population has naturally blond hair." If you're part of this 2%, it means you were born with a much larger amount of pheomelanin than eumelanin, as MedlinePlus explains.
Red is the rarest hair color in the world
If you were born with red hair, congratulations: your hair color is the rarest color in the world, which does feel like something to celebrate doesn't it? The Daily Mail claims that "just over 0.5% (1 in 200) have red hair, which is nearly 40 million people." Although it's a low number, many celebrities are natural gingers, including Emma Stone, Sophie Turner, and Julia Roberts (via Elle).
As News-Medical.net explains, redheads are most common in Ireland and Britain. World Population Review claims the country where you'll find the most natural redheads is Scotland; 13% of the Scottish population was born with red hair.
Live Science claims the reason this color is so rare is that the redhead gene is recessive, meaning two copies of it must be present in the DNA for a baby to be born with red hair. This also means that a couple without red hair could give birth to a redheaded child since it's possible for people to carry the gene without passing it down to the immediate next generation.
To recap, black and brown are the most common hair colors in the world, followed by blond and red. And if you're wondering about white hair, with the exception of those born with albinism, humans aren't typically born with white hair, according to the NHS. However, as you know, hair can turn white with age after the pigment cells die, as Healthline explains.