Slightly more than 98 percent of the world's population has dark, brown or black hair. Europe has some of the greatest hair color diversity, yet worldwide only about 1 percent of people have blonde hair. Red hair is the rarest of all, at less than 1 percent worldwide. Red hair genetics exist, but certain conditions have to be met in the parents for their children to end up with red hair.

red hair genetics

Red hair genetics: certain pigments at work

Hair color comes from a special pigment our body produces, called melanin, which comes in two different variants. One is eumelanin, which produces black-brown hair pigmentation, and the other is pheomelanin, which produces blond-red shades. In people with dark hair, the body produces a lot of eumelanin and only a little pheomelanin; in redheads, more pheomelanin is produced instead.

Blonde hair comes about because very little of either pigment is produced; in other words, hair turns blonde when it contains few or none of the color pigments.

Red hair genetics - pure genetics

Our hair color is genetically determined. Many genes are involved in coloring our hair, and not all of them have been fully researched or identified yet. What we do know today is that the MC1R gene is especially important and that it contains the blueprint for a particular protein that regulates the production of the dark pigment. Sometimes this gene is damaged, which throws the balance of the pigments off, and the result is red hair.

Red hair genetics aren't very common, because the gene defect is inherited recessively. That means both parents have to pass on this faulty gene. So the gene has to be present in the bodies of both parents, which doesn't mean that both parents have to have red hair.

Besides the fact that hair color is genetically pre-programmed, so-called mutations can also occur. They are rare, but they do happen from time to time. The topic of red hair genetics is a science in itself, and genetics is so incredibly complicated and intertwined that research will certainly need many more years to solve all of its genetic secrets.