How the eye color checker works
The eye color checker tells you what color your eyes are from one selfie. It reads the colored ring of your iris the way you would in a mirror by a window, but it measures every pixel, and it runs entirely on your device.
- Your photo stays on your device. It is read by your browser and never uploaded. A sharper copy is kept in memory for the irises, which are small in most photos.
- Your eyes are found. A face model in your browser places points around your eyelids, irises and pupils, and checks the mirror image of your photo too, so each iris is placed more steadily.
- The light is balanced. The whites of your eyes are a natural reference for white. The checker corrects the colors of the photo so they look white, which removes most of the tint from lamps, screens and shade.
- Your irises are read. The checker reads a ring between the pupil and the edge of each iris, inside your eyelids. It leaves out the pupil, bright reflections and the shadow of your lashes, and reads both eyes separately.
- You get your color. Every pixel is sorted into a color family, such as brown, amber, green, blue or gray. The mix of families names your eye color. A brown or gold center with green further out reads as hazel, and blue or gray mixed with green reads as a blend such as blue green.
What is my eye color, the six main colors at a glance
| Color | What it looks like | Guide |
|---|---|---|
| Brown | Light brown to near black, even across the iris | Brown eyes |
| Amber | An even gold to copper, with little or no green | Amber eyes |
| Hazel | Brown or gold near the pupil, green further out | Hazel eyes |
| Green | Jade, emerald or olive, often with a gold ring | Green eyes |
| Blue | Ice, sky, steel or deep blue | Blue eyes |
| Gray | Silver, pewter or slate | Gray eyes |
The checker also names the in between shades, dark brown and light brown, blue green, gray green and blue gray. Our eye color chart shows every shade with its name.
How to get an accurate result
Light changes eye color more than anything else, so a good photo matters more than a good camera.
- Face a window in daylight. Turn off lamps and overhead lights, which tint the photo warm.
- Turn the flash off. Flash puts a bright reflection on the iris and can turn the pupils red.
- Take off glasses, especially tinted ones. Lenses add reflections and tint the eyes.
- Hold the phone close, about a forearm away, at eye level. The iris needs to be big enough to read.
- Open your eyes wide and look straight into the lens. Half closed lids hide the iris and the eye whites.
- Skip filters and beauty modes. They shift colors and can smooth away the detail of the iris.
If your result is a close call, try a second photo in different daylight. The color that comes up most often is your best answer.
Understanding your result and shade mix
- Your eye color is the main color the checker found, with a short description and a link to its full guide.
- The certainty tells you how strongly your irises point to that color. A close call means your eyes sit between two colors, or the photo was hard to read.
- The shade mix is a bar showing each color family the checker found, written in words, for example mostly green with some light brown and a gold ring near the pupil.
- Your iris shades are swatches of the colors measured in your irises, with their hex codes, plus the color of the inner zone near the pupil and the outer zone near the edge. Irises sit in the shade of the brows and photograph darker than they look in a mirror, so the swatches are shown brighter, as if the photo were exposed for your eyes.
- Limbal ring says whether the edge of your iris is clearly darker than the middle. Our guide to the limbal ring explains what that ring is.
- Your irises up close shows a zoomed crop of each eye with the ring that was read drawn on it, so you can see what was measured.
When the inner and outer zones are clearly different colors, the result names the pattern, called central heterochromia, which our guide to central heterochromia explains. When your two eyes read differently, the result says so, and points out that light falling unevenly on your face is the usual reason.
Eye color test or eye color identifier, what it can and cannot do
An eye color test like this one names a shade. That is all it does. It does not read anything about your eye health, it does not guess anything about where you or your family come from, and it cannot see through colored contact lenses. If you notice a new change in the color of one or both eyes, show it to an eye doctor rather than a website.
Why eye color seems to change
There is no blue or green pigment in the human eye. Every eye color comes from melanin, the brown pigment in the front layer of the iris, and from the way that layer scatters light. Blue, gray and green eyes owe much of their color to scattered light, which is why they shift so much.
- Light. Daylight shows the truest color. Warm lamps push eyes toward brown and gold, and shade pushes them toward gray.
- Clothes and makeup. Colors near your face reflect onto your eyes and change what your brain expects to see.
- Pupil size. In bright light the pupil is small and more of the iris shows, including any gold ring near the center.
Brown eyes change the least, because their color comes mostly from pigment.
Accuracy, limits and the science
Eye color is easy to see and surprisingly hard to measure. Irises are small, they sit in the shade of the brows, and they photograph with far less color than they show in a mirror. That is why the checker balances the light first and reads hundreds of pixels in each iris rather than one average color.
We tested it on 2,578 public portraits from Wikimedia Commons of people whose eye color is recorded on Wikidata. Most were event photos rather than selfies, and 701 had eyes large and straight on enough to read. On those, the checker named the same color as the record 51 percent of the time, 56 percent on the closer photos most like a selfie, and the same or a neighboring color, such as hazel for brown or gray for blue, 78 percent of the time. It told light eyes from dark eyes 68 percent of the time, and running the same photo again always gave the same answer.
Those records were not checked against the photos, and many photos were taken under stage or indoor light, which pushes hazel and green toward brown. So treat these numbers as a rough first check. They come from labelled public portraits, and we will update them if we test on eyes checked in person.
Some limits to keep in mind.
- A photo records light, not pigment. Even after correction, camera processing and screens shift colors a little.
- Very dark photos, strong flash and tinted glasses all make irises harder to read, and the result says so.
- Eye color names are not official, and people often disagree about borderline eyes, especially hazel and brown, green and hazel, and blue and gray.
Read how we built and tested the checker on our methodology page.
Privacy
Your photo never leaves your device. It is read by your browser, measured there and forgotten when you close the page. We do not upload it, store it or see it. The share card is made on your device too, and your irises appear on it only if you tick the box. Read our privacy policy for the full details.
For colors that make your eyes stand out together with your skin and hair, try our seasonal color analysis, or read about the rarest eye colors.