But some children with light hair, including towhead blonds, strawberry blonds, dishwater blonds and redheads, see their hair go dark brown by their 10th birthday. The reason for this change is because the amount of eumelanin in your hair increases as you mature, according to some research.
It's the same pigment that gives skin its color! This melanin pigment is made by special cells called melanocytes. These cells live at the bottom of each strand of hair. When these cells make a lot of melanin, your hair turns brown or black.
Many natural blondes go darker over time and end up brunette by early adolescence or even later. If you're wondering why that happened, we can help. In this article, we'll reveal several reasons why blonde hair turns brown. Let's get right into it!
Natural red hair is the rarest hair color in the world, only occurring in 1 to 2% of the global population. Since red hair is a recessive genetic trait, it is necessary for both parents to carry the gene, whether or not they themselves are redheaded.
If You Have Blonde Hair
Blonds get white hair just like brunets, but some blondes only appear to get a lighter blond while others experience their blonde hairs getting darker and duller as the white hairs begin to appear. Still, blondes can, over time, have a full head of white hair.
Most women think brunette hair is the sexiest, as 25% of those polled favoured this option. Womens' second preference is blonde, which was voted as the sexiest hair colour by 19.6% of women. Again, red took third spot, accounting for 11.8% of womens' votes.
Since brown hair is a dominant trait, at least one of the parents would have to have brown hair. But since they're both blondes, the brunette gene can't exist, otherwise the parents would have shown brown hair. While brunettes can have blonde children, blondes cannot have brunette children.
Being naturally blonde is pretty rare.
Only 2 percent of people in the world are natural blondes. (About one in 20 Americans are.) But that doesn't mean it's not popular. One in three women dyes her locks light enough to be considered blonde.
Some sources, such as Eupedia, claim that in central parts of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland, 80% of the population is blonde, with natural fair-haired people in other Baltic Countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and other parts of Scandinavia) making up 50-79% of the population.
Is it possible for an adult with naturally blond hair to have brown eyes? Inheritance of eye color is more complicated than we had once thought. So the answer is yes, but the combination is extremely rare.
Who lived longer, blondes or non-blondes? The researchers showed that the blondes had significantly lower all-cause death. Still, they had a higher mortality from skin cancer. Contrasted and compared to the non-blondes, the blondes had significantly reduced all-cause death.
For hair color, the theory goes: Each parent carries two alleles (gene variants) for hair color. Blonde hair is a recessive gene and brown hair is a dominant gene.
And it is true: the hereditary factor is more dominant on the mother's side. If your dad has a full head of hair but your mom's brother is a 5 on the Norwood Scale at age 35, chances are you will follow your uncle's journey through MPB.
Two Blonde Parents Make a Blonde Baby
If both parents are blonde, it is possible to have a blonde child due to a recessive mode of inheritance where both parents pass on the blonde gene.
They say gentlemen prefer blondes – but it seems that only holds true when they are out on the town. For, while they are more likely to chat up a fair-haired lady on a night out, men actually find brunettes more attractive, a study has shown.
But, according to a study, it seems gentlemen still prefer blondes. Researchers found that men judge women with blonde hair to be 'significantly' younger and healthier-looking than brunettes. And, falling to prey to old stereotypes, they also judged blonde women to be more promiscuous.
Sorry blondes, but 60% of the men in question said they find brunette to be the most desirable. A third of the men polled (33.1%) said they think the most attractive hair color is brown hair, while 28.6% said they prefer black hair. That means that in total, 59.7% of men said they prefer women with dark hair.
Is Hair Color Inherited from Mother or Father? Hair color comes from both parents through the chromosomes passed onto their child. The 46 chromosomes (23 from each parent) have genes made up of DNA with instructions of what traits a child will inherit.
As we've learned, dads contribute one Y or one X chromosome to their offspring. Girls get two X chromosomes, one from Mom and one from Dad. This means that your daughter will inherit X-linked genes from her father as well as her mother.
The genetics of height
If they are tall or short, then your own height is said to end up somewhere based on the average heights between your two parents. Genes aren't the sole predictor of a person's height. In some instances, a child might be much taller than their parents and other relatives.
It turns out that brown hair is dominant. That means that even if only one of your two alleles is for brown hair, your hair will be brown. The blond allele is recessive, and gets covered up. If two brunette parents have a blond child, they had to have instructions for making blond hair hidden in their DNA.
In the array of possible natural hair colors, dark hues are the most common — more than 90 percent of people worldwide have brown or black hair. That's followed by blonde hair. Red hair, occurring in just 1 to 2 percent of the population, is the least common.
Red hair was the least favorable among both groups.
According to the study, 27 percent of males chose the blonde photo of the woman to be the most attractive, while 23 precent of women similarly preferred the blonde hair. Red hair was deemed least attractive by both groups, however.
Lighter Features and Freckles
Lighter features typically indicate a paler skin tone, which—as previously noted—is more prone to sun damage (the number-one risk factor for fast-tracked aging.) “Having less melanin in your skin may also predispose you to premature aging due to photodamage,” says Dr. Preminger.
Brown hair, the most common naturally occurring hair color, is also the most coarse and thick hair type.