Imagining what your baby will look like can be so fun. Will they resemble you, your partner, or maybe even a grandparent? One of the most common questions parents ask is what color eyes their baby will have.

While some physical traits are hard to predict, genetics strongly influence eye color. Your baby’s eye color depends largely on melanin and the genes inherited from both biological parents. Even then, eye color can still surprise families because inheritance patterns are more complex than many people realize.¹

Here’s what determines your baby’s eye shade, when babies’ eyes may change color, how eye color charts work, and what you should know about protecting your baby’s eyes as they grow.

What Determines a Baby’s Eye Color?

The color of your baby’s eyes depends on how much pigment is in the iris, which is mostly determined by genetics.² Let’s take a closer look at melanin and the genetic factors that influence eye color:

How Melanin Affects Eye Color

The iris is the colored part of the eye that surrounds a small, black pupil. A baby’s iris color is influenced by the amount of pigment in the iris of the eye.³ Eye color pigment is called melanin. Darker, brown irises have more melanin than lighter, blue irises.² Eye pigmentation exists on a full spectrum from light blue to almost black. But eyes are usually classified into four colors: blue, green, hazel, or brown.³

How Genetics Influence Eye Color

Genetics determines how much melanin a body produces, how it’s transported, and where it’s stored.³ Multiple genes play a role in eye color determination, and many of them are also involved in hair and skin color. Since this involves multiple inherited traits, iris color doesn’t follow a simple dominant-recessive inheritance pattern.

Contrary to popular belief about inheritance patterns for eye color, it’s possible (though rare) for two blue-eyed parents to have a brown-eyed baby.³

Related: Baby Vision Development by Age: Newborn to Infant

Are All Babies Born With Blue Eyes?

Many babies are born with blue eyes because the melanin that makes eyes darker has yet to fully develop.¹ Melanin production can change over time, which sometimes causes a change in iris color from birth.² However, it’s a myth that all babies are born with blue eyes. Many newborns have brown eyes that stay brown.²

When Do Babies’ Eyes Change Color?

If it’s possible for their eye color to change over time, when do babies get their eye color? Melanin production can take up to a year to reach completion after your baby is born. Therefore, if your infant is going to experience an eye color change, it’s most likely to occur between 6 and 12 months of age.⁴

Sometimes, it can take even longer to notice a shift in iris color. In one study, 10-20% of children experienced a change in eye color between 3 months and 6 years of age. 10-15% of Caucasian individuals in the change group experienced eye color changes up to adulthood.⁵

For many babies, eye color gradually settles over the first year, though subtle changes can continue later in childhood.

Related: When Do Babies’ Eyes Change Color and When Is It Permanent?

What Color Eyes Will Your Baby Have?

While baby eye color isn’t as straightforward as researchers once believed, we can still predict it pretty accurately based on each biological parent’s eye color (and sometimes the grandparents’).⁴

Dark eyes are a dominant trait, meaning that, most of the time, if a baby inherits any one gene for brown eyes, their eyes will be brown.¹ However, a brown-eyed parent can still carry and pass on a blue-eyed trait. It might be masked in that parent’s eyes, but if one of their parents (the child’s grandparents) has blue eyes, it’s still possible for the baby to have blue eyes.⁶

Two Blue- or Green-Eyed Parents

In general, two parents with blue or green eyes are very likely to have children with blue or green eyes.⁴

Two Brown-Eyed Parents

Two parents with brown eyes usually have brown-eyed babies, but they can sometimes have blue-eyed babies depending on the inherited traits they carry from their parents.⁴

One Blue-Eyed and One Brown-Eyed Parent

Children with one blue-eyed and one brown-eyed parent can have blue- or brown-eyed babies depending on whether there are any blue-eyed family members on the brown-eyed parent’s side of the family.⁴

Baby Eye Color Charts

Eye color charts can provide fun estimates based on inherited traits, though they cannot guarantee a baby’s final eye color.

You can use a Punnett square to predict eye color. This is a simplified model, as many complex genetic factors influence eye color. We all inherit one copy of each gene from each parent. So remember, even a brown-eyed person might have a hidden blue-eyed trait to pass on since brown is dominant over blue.¹ A genotype reports both copies of a gene, regardless of what you can see.⁷

A Punnett square places one parent’s genotype at the top of the square and one parent’s to the left. A capital “B” represents a dominant gene (brown), and a lowercase “b” represents a recessive gene (blue). A brown-eyed parent’s genotype can either be “BB” or “Bb.” A blue-eyed parent is always “bb.”⁷ While a Punnett square reports a 100% chance that two blue-eyed parents will have blue-eyed children, it’s possible, though rare, for them to have a brown-eyed baby. This is because of the complex inheritance patterns that influence eye colors and the concentration of melanin in the eyes.¹

Because many genes influence eye color, predictions are never guaranteed. These Punnett squares can serve as a baby eye color calculator to make a prediction based on the colors of the baby’s parents and grandparents:⁶

Two Blue-Eyed Parents

One Blue-Eyed and One Brown-Eyed Parent

Two Brown-Eyed Parents

And here’s a full chart that breaks down the percentages.

Keeping Your Baby’s Eyes Safe

Researchers believe eye color may have evolved in response to differences in sun exposure around the world. At higher latitudes with less sun exposure, lighter eyes with less melanin are able to absorb more vitamin D. At lower latitudes with more sun exposure, darker eyes have protection against too much UV damage.²

Regardless of your baby’s eye color, protecting your baby’s eyes from the sun is important to prevent eye problems later in life.⁸ Some easy interventions to keep your baby’s eyes safe include:⁸

• Putting on sunglasses with 100% UV protection
• Having your little one wear a wide-brimmed hat
• Keeping your little one in the shade, especially in the summer, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
• Installing mesh sunshades in the car

Whether your baby’s eyes are blue, brown, green, hazel, or somewhere in between, it’s easy to get lost staring into them. While genetics can help estimate your child’s eye shade, only time will reveal the exact eye color your child will have.

As your infant’s vision develops, their eyes may continue changing and becoming more expressive throughout infancy. Focus on protecting their eyes from the sun, watching them grow, and enjoying every stage of their unique appearance along the way.

Related: Cross-Eyed Baby: What It Means and What to Do

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Baby Eye Color