Hair Facts 56 Hair Color Statistics Including Genetics

	Hair Color Statistics	

1. Hair coloring and hair dyes date back to the Greeks and Romans.
2. Black Hair is the most common hair color in the world, with an estimate of 75%-85% of the population having this shade.
3. Millions of unique hair color shades people wear around the world.
4. Black hair has multiple shades and undertones. 
5. 11% of the world’s population have brown hair color.
6. 2% of the world’s population have naturally blonde hair color.
7. Red hair is the rarest hair color, with only 1% of the world’s population having this hair shade.
8. 1% of the world’s population has gray or white hair worldwide.
9. 3 in 4 Caucasian women choose to dye their hair blonde at some point in their lives.
10. Piebaldism is a melanocyte or pigment cell disorder that results in a section of white hair at the front hairline.
11. Less than 1 in every 20,000 people worldwide have piebaldism disorder.
12. Black and brown hair: Up to 95% black or brown eumelanin and approximately 5% pheomelanin.
13. Red hair: About 33% pheomelanin and approximately 66% brown or black eumelanin.
14. Blonde hair: About 33% pheomelanin and approximately 66% brown eumelanin (no black eumelanin).
15. L’Oreal Paris leads the women’s hair coloring market share with almost 38% of the market sales.
16. The type and amount of melanin in the hair are determined by many genes, although little is known about most of them.
17. In the 1950s, 7% of American women dyed their hair.
18. Blond hair is more expensive and will cost up to 3x more than dark hair.

	Hair and Eye Color Combination Statistics	

19. Hair color is determined by pigment or melanin in the hair.
20. Eumelanin, another melanin or pigment, determines people’s black or brown hair.
21. Another pigment, called pheomelanin, gives people red hair.
22. Very little eumelanin gives people blonde hair.
23. Hair colors are passed down through generations.
24. Hair colors are a spectrum of hues ranging from white blond to coal black.
25. The genes involved in hair color also influence eye and skin color.
26. The genes responsible for hair color aren’t dominant or recessive.
27. Red hair and green eyes are the rarest hair and eye combination.
28. The MCR1 gene dictates whether you have red hair and is recessive. It depends on whether genes are turned on or turned off.
29. Our DNA has 20,000 genes. Only a few of these genes dictate hair color and eye color.
30. A pigment called melanin determines our hair, eye, and skin color.
31. The MCR1 gene comes in two variants: non-red and red. The non-red version is dominant.
32. Gey, one of the genes determining eye color, comes in two forms: green and blue. Blue is the dominant allele.
33. Alleles of the gene OCA2 determine whether someone has brown or not-brown eyes.
34. Red hair is rare because it’s a recessive trait that occurs only when a person has 2 copies (one from each parent) of a mutated melanin-conversion (pigment changing) gene.
35. 25% are the chances of a red hair person having a child with red hair with someone with dark hair who carries the red hair gene mutation.
36. The best-studied hair-color gene in humans is called MC1R.
37. The MC1R gene provides instructions for making a protein called the melanocortin 1 receptor, which is involved in the melanin pathway.

	Hair Coloring Statistics 2021	

38. Women choose to bleach or dye their hair blonde more than any other hair color worldwide. 
39. There’s a higher ratio of blondes in your everyday life than the official 2-3% natural blonde statistic.
40. 1-2% of the world’s population has natural red hair.
41. Hair coloring reached over 29 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 globally.
42. The hair coloring market is expected to increase beyond 40 billion U.S. dollars by 2023.
43. There are 27 contract manufacturers of hair coloring products in the United States, mostly based in New Jersey.
44. Hair coloring makes up 13% of the American hair care industry.
45. Women’s hair coloring products make up the vast majority of coloring sales, which reached over a billion U.S. dollars in 2019 and continue to grow.
46. Americans get their hair colored 4 to 5 times yearly, typically with permanent color.
47. People go to the salon at about the same rate, perhaps due to the soothing draw of the professional hair care experience.
48. As of 2019, over 64 million people used hair coloring products on their hair.
49. 75% of American women dye their hair today.

	Hair Color Statistics by Country	

50. In the United States, 7.5% of women have black hair.
51. In Asia, 4.6 billion people have black hair color. 
52. In Africa, 1.2 billion people have black hair color.  
53. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland have the highest blonde hair rates.
54. China and India have the highest black and brown hair rates.
55. Scotland has the highest population of redheads in the world, coming at 13%.
56. The United States has the second largest natural redheads population, around 5%.     Sources: WebMD, You Probably Need a Haircut, LiveScience, NCBI, Statista, MedLine Plus, AiryHair.