My eyes are hazel and I have often wondered where my eye color comes from. My mom’s eyes are brown, my dad’s are blue, so I think I have a combination of both.  And often with my hazel eyes, my eyes change colors depending on the lighting and what I am wearing.  I have wondered why this happens. Apparently vampires that drink blood have red eyes and vegetarian vampires have golden eyes.  A girl I work with was wondering the other day what exactly hazel eyes are, so this is for her and other people who are unsure of what hazel eyes are.

Well, hazel eyes are because of a combination of the scattering of lights and a moderate amount of melanin in the iris’ anterior border layer. Many times hazel eyes look like they shift in color from a light brown to a dark golden-green. Hazel mostly consists of brown and green but can also include blue. The dominant color in the eye can either be green or light brown/gold. This can sometimes produce a multicolored iris like an eye that is light brown near the pupil and charcoal or amber/dark green on the outer part of the iris (and vice versa) when observed in sunlight.