The Color of the Eye

As we look into a person’s eyes, we perceive and transfer many nonverbal information and emotional signals. The color preference of the eyes has an important impact on these processes. In this chapter, we will review the basics of “what is the source of eye color”. The entire process of color presentation of the eye can be summarized and placed in a nutshell. The light enters the eye, interacts with the cornea, anterior chamber fluid, and the iris tissue. This interaction involves the cellular structures, collagen fibers (cornea and iris), the water molecules, the melanin pigment, blood vessels, the soft tissue matrix of cornea and iris, and other cellular components. These components absorb, scatter, refract, diffract, and reflects light (photons) altering its emission out of the eye by absorbing most of it by pigment melanin as in brown eyes or by changing its wavelength causing the emission of a different (shorter) wavelength as in blue eyes. This reflected light of a certain wavelength is then received by an observer’s eyes and would be interpreted as a specific color.