The rarest eye color
Gray is the rarest eye color in the largest U.S. records: 0.7% of 235,423,085 active driver’s licenses in 31 states, about 1 in 143. Green is next at 9%, then hazel at 10.3% and blue at 23.7%. Brown or black is the most common at 53%. Another 3.3% of licenses record pink, maroon, dichromatic or unknown.
Check your own color with the eye color tool: it shows the share, the rank and the other U.S. counts beside each result, and makes a card you can share.
How rare are gray eyes?
Gray is recorded on 0.7% of U.S. driver’s licenses, about 1 in 143, the rarest listed color. In YouGov’s May 2023 poll of 1,000 adults, 4% named gray. The gap comes from method: a license records one color from a fixed list, while the poll asked people to pick among eight answers.
How rare are green eyes?
Green is recorded on 9% of U.S. driver’s licenses, about 1 in 11. The 2014 Harris Poll found the same 9%, and YouGov’s 2023 poll 11%. Among the four familiar colors, green is the rarest in every source.
How rare are amber eyes?
Amber is not a license category. In YouGov’s 2023 poll, 4% of U.S. adults named amber, about 1 in 25, tied with gray as the poll’s rarest answer. It is the only U.S. count of amber eyes we found.
How rare are hazel eyes?
Hazel is recorded on 10.3% of U.S. driver’s licenses, about 1 in 10. The polls report more: 15% in 2023 and 18% in 2014. Hazel sits between brown and green, so the share depends on how people describe it.
How rare are blue eyes?
Blue is recorded on 23.7% of U.S. driver’s licenses, about 1 in 4. The 2023 poll found 23% and the 2014 poll 27%.
How rare are brown eyes?
Brown or black is the most common: 53% of U.S. driver’s licenses, about 1 in 2. The polls, which asked about brown alone, found 40% (2023) and 45% (2014).
How rare is heterochromia?
Complete heterochromia, two eyes of different colors, appeared in 7 of 11,111 high-resolution portraits of U.S. Military Academy cadets: 0.063%, about 1 in 1,587, with a 95% interval of 0.028–0.133% (Dabkowski and colleagues, Journal of Optometry). Partial heterochromia within one iris was not counted. License records put “dichromatic” inside their 3.3% other group.
Why the sources disagree
The license figures come from Hashem, Menicacci and Granet in PLOS ONE (2025), the 2023 figures from YouGov and the 2014 figures from the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s account of a Harris Poll. Each measures differently, so the table keeps them side by side and never averages them. None counts the world; the methodology has the detail.
Good questions
What is the rarest eye color?
Gray, recorded on 0.7% of 235,423,085 active U.S. driver’s licenses in 31 states, about 1 in 143. Green is next at 9%. Complete heterochromia, two different-colored eyes, is rarer than any single color: 0.063% in a study of 11,111 portraits.
What is the most common eye color?
Brown or black: 53% of U.S. driver’s licenses. Brown also leads the 2023 YouGov poll (40%) and the 2014 Harris Poll (45%).
What is the rarest eye color in the world?
No survey counts eye color for the whole world. In the largest U.S. records, 235 million driver’s licenses, gray is the rarest listed color at 0.7%. Complete heterochromia is rarer still, at about 1 in 1,587 in a West Point portrait study.
What percentage of people have green eyes?
9% of U.S. driver’s licenses record green eyes, about 1 in 11. In YouGov’s 2023 poll 11% of adults said green, and in the 2014 Harris Poll 9% did.
How rare is heterochromia?
Complete heterochromia, where the two eyes are different colors, appeared in 7 of 11,111 portraits of U.S. Military Academy cadets: 0.063%, about 1 in 1,587, with a 95% interval of 0.028–0.133%. Partial heterochromia within one iris was not counted.