An eye color chart sorts every shade of iris into six main colors, brown, amber, hazel, green, blue and gray, each with a range of named shades. The chart below shows all of them side by side, drawn from our own swatches. To find your place on it, our free eye color checker reads your iris from a selfie.
The eye color chart
Each row is one of the six main eye colors, with six named shades from our own swatches. These are illustrations, not photos of real eyes, so treat each shade as a guide to the range rather than an exact match.
The six main eye colors
| Color | What it looks like | Pigment | Guide |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brown | Light brown to near black, even across the iris | Plenty of melanin | Brown eyes |
| Amber | Even gold to copper, little or no green | Moderate, with a yellow tint | Amber eyes |
| Hazel | Brown or gold near the pupil, green further out | Moderate, more near the pupil | Hazel eyes |
| Green | Jade, emerald or olive, often with a gold ring | Little, with a yellow tint | Green eyes |
| Blue | Ice, sky, steel or deep blue | Very little | Blue eyes |
| Gray | Silver, pewter or slate | Very little, more collagen | Gray eyes |
Each guide covers the full range of shades, how common the color is, why it looks the way it does and which colors make it stand out.
Eye color shades by name
Shade names are not official, and different charts use different names for the same thing. These are the names we use, and what they mean.
Brown shades
- Espresso and dark brown. The deepest brown, which can look black indoors.
- Chocolate and chestnut. An even medium brown, sometimes with a red cast.
- Golden brown and light brown. Lighter brown with honey tones in sun.
Amber and hazel shades
- Honey, gold and whiskey. Even golden amber with no green.
- Copper and russet. Amber with a red orange cast.
- Golden, brown, green and moss hazel. Hazel named by whichever color is strongest.
Green shades
- Jade and sea green. Soft, slightly blue green.
- Emerald. A clear, saturated green.
- Olive and moss. Green with a warm, muted cast, close to hazel.
Blue and gray shades
- Ice and sky blue. Pale, bright blue.
- Steel and denim. Muted, grayish blue.
- Silver, pewter and slate. Gray with little color of its own.
Colors between the six
Plenty of eyes do not fit neatly in one row. The most common in between shades are these.
- Blue green. Between blue and green, often called teal or aqua. Our guide to blue green eyes covers it.
- Gray green. A muted sage, between gray and green.
- Blue gray. A cool, steely shade between blue and gray.
Patterns also cross the rows. A ring of gold or brown around the pupil inside a green or blue iris is called central heterochromia, and our guide to central heterochromia explains it. A dark ring at the outer edge is a limbal ring.
Why eye colors form a scale
All eye colors come from the same two ingredients, melanin in the front layer of the iris, and light scattering in that layer. Put them in order of pigment and they form a scale.
At the low end, blue and gray eyes owe their color mostly to scattered light. In the middle, green and hazel mix scattered light with some pigment and a yellow tint. At the high end, brown eyes owe their color mostly to melanin. That is why lighter eyes change more with the light than brown eyes do.
How common each color is
Brown is the most common eye color in the world by a wide margin. In the US, a 2014 poll for the American Academy of Ophthalmology found about 45 percent brown, 27 percent blue, 18 percent hazel and 9 percent green, with about 1 percent choosing something else. Gray and amber are uncommon but rarely counted separately. Our guide to the rarest eye colors has the full ranking.
How to find your place on the chart
The light you look in matters more than the chart itself.
- Use daylight. Stand facing a window with lamps off. Warm indoor light pushes every eye toward brown.
- Use a mirror or the front camera. Hold it close, about a forearm away.
- Look at the main color first, then at the ring around the pupil and the outer edge.
- Compare with the rows, then with the named shades.
- Check twice, once on a sunny day and once on a cloudy one, because lighter eyes shift between them.
Our eye color checker does this for you. It balances the light using the whites of your eyes, reads the ring between your pupil and the edge of your iris, and names the closest color with a shade mix, all on your device.
Eye color and the colors that suit you
Your eye color is one part of your overall coloring, together with your skin and hair. Each guide above lists colors that make that eye color stand out. For a full palette built from all three, try our seasonal color analysis.
Eye color in photos vs in person
A chart drawn on a screen is a guide, and so is a photo of your eyes. Cameras and screens both change color.
- Phone cameras brighten shadows and boost color on their own, which can make green look more vivid and brown look more golden than in a mirror.
- Screens differ in brightness and color, so the same chart looks slightly different on two phones.
- Indoor light is warmer and dimmer than daylight, which pushes every eye toward brown.
That is why our checker balances each photo against the whites of your eyes before it reads anything, and why daylight by a window gives the most faithful match to the chart.
Makeup by eye color
Each color has shades that make it stand out, usually colors from across the color wheel.
| Eye color | Shadows that make it stand out |
|---|---|
| Brown | Navy, teal, emerald, gold and plum |
| Amber | Navy, violet, teal and cobalt |
| Hazel | Plum, wine, bronze and copper |
| Green | Plum, mauve, wine and rust |
| Blue | Copper, peach, bronze and terracotta |
| Gray | Charcoal, smoky blue, sage and plum |
Each eye color guide above has a full swatch set of colors to wear.
How fuzzy the lines between colors are
The rows of a chart look neat, but real eyes do not respect them. When we tested our eye color checker on 701 public portraits with a recorded eye color, it named the exact recorded color 51 percent of the time, and the same or a neighboring color 78 percent of the time. Most misses landed one row away, hazel read as brown, green read as hazel, or gray read as blue.
That gap between exact and neighboring is the honest shape of eye color. If your eyes sit near the border between two rows, both rows describe you, and the light on the day decides which one shows. The full test is on our methodology page.