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Charlotte Lozier Institute

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Charlotte Lozier Institute

Phone: 202-223-8073
Fax: 571-312-0544

2776 S. Arlington Mill Dr.
#803
Arlington, VA 22206

The
Voyage of Life

The Newborn Senses: Sight and Eye Color

Dive Deeper
What can newborns see?

Newborns have poor eyesight, in part because they did not get much visual information in the womb. At birth, the average baby’s visual acuity is 20/860,1 meaning that an object that an average adult can see 860 feet away, would need to be just 20 feet away in order for the baby to see it. For perspective, a person is legally blind if their visual acuity is 20/200 or worse. Thankfully, the infant’s visual acuity quickly improves. At one month old, the average acuity is 20/235. At six months old, the average acuity is 20/60. By three years old the average acuity is pretty close to an adult’s acuity — 20/25.2 Newborns also lack depth perception, which develops around 4 months old.3

Six images show how newborn senses, especially sight, change from birth to adulthood. The toy starts out very blurry, gradually sharpens with age, and appears clear and colorful in the adult image, illustrating visual development over time.
At birth, the retina has not finished developing. As the baby gets older, the baby can see finer details and more colors. (Image Credit: Katrina Furth, Ph.D.)
A newborn’s world isn’t black and white: babies can distinguish some colors within days of birth, and their color vision rapidly improves over the next few months.

Contrary to popular belief, a newborn’s vision is not colorless, but rather muted — they see very little color and only subtle differences between vastly different hues. Although newborns have very poor color discrimination at birth, this improves greatly over the next few months. Specifically, when researchers tested 4-day-old babies, they found that these infants could tell the difference between white and orange, but not white and yellow-green.4

Similar studies have shown that before 4 weeks old, babies have trouble distinguishing:

  • Red and green
  • Red and yellow
  • White and red
  • White and dark blue.5

By 8 weeks old, babies can reliably tell the difference between red and white, as well as light blue, and some greens. But they still struggle with yellow as well as certain shades of purple.6 A child’s color vision continues maturing throughout infancy and early childhood.7

Given all these visual limitations, it may seem surprising that newborns are fascinated by visual information. Infants love watching moving objects and faces.8 Despite their limited vision, infants ranging from 12 to 36 hours old show a clear preference for watching silent videos of their mother as opposed to the face of a similar stranger,9 demonstrating visual recognition.

Within 12 to 36 hours of birth, newborns already prefer looking at their mother’s face over a stranger’s.10
When do baby's eyes change color?

Many infants are born with light blue or gray eyes. As the baby encounters light after birth, specialized cells called melanocytes begin producing more melanin, gradually shaping eye color. Brown eyes have lots of melanin in the iris, while blue eyes have very little. In blue eyes, light scatters off tiny structures in the iris, making them look blue, and differences in structure and small amounts of pigment create shades like green, hazel, or gray.11

A baby’s eye color typically stabilizes between 6 and 10 months old.12 Yet newer research paints a more nuanced picture: many babies are born with brown eyes, and over two thirds do not change eye color in their first two years of life.13 In most people, eye color settles by 6 years of age, although about 10 to 15 percent of people with European ancestry may have subtle changes in eye color into adulthood.14

Blue eyes aren’t truly blue—they get their color the same way the sky does, through the scattering of light. (Image Credit: Katrina Furth, Ph.D.)
Blue eyes aren’t truly blue—they get their color the same way the sky does, through the scattering of light. (Image Credit: Katrina Furth, Ph.D.)
Blue eyes aren’t actually blue: like the blue sky, they get their color largely from the way light scatters.

Click on the video to see an illustration of how a baby's eyesight develops

Click on the video to see an illustration of how a baby’s eyesight develops

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Back to The Voyage of Life
Sources
  1. ^ Brown, A. M., & Yamamoto, M. (1986). Visual acuity in newborn and preterm infants measured with grating acuity cards. American journal of ophthalmology, 102(2), 245-253. https://www.ajo.com/article/0002-9394(86)90153-4/abstract.
  2. ^ Salomão, S. R., Ejzenbaum, F., Berezovsky, A., Sacai, P. Y., & Pereira, J. M. (2008). Age norms for monocular grating acuity measured by sweep-VEP in the first three years of age. Arquivos brasileiros de oftalmologia, 71(4), 475-479. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0004-27492008000400002
  3. ^ Jandó, G., Mikó-Baráth, E., Markó, K., Hollódy, K., Török, B., & Kovacs, I. (2012). Early-onset binocularity in preterm infants reveals experience-dependent visual development in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(27), 11049-11052. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1203096109
  4. ^ Adams, R. J., Courage, M. L., & Mercer, M. E. (1991). Deficiencies in human neonates' color vision: photoreceptoral and neural explanations. Behavioural brain research, 43(2), 109-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4328(05)80060-9
  5. ^ Adams, R. J. (1995). Further exploration of human neonatal chromatic-achromatic discrimination. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 60(3), 344-360. https://doi.org/10.1006/jecp.1995.1045
  6. ^ Banks, M. S., & Bennett, P. J. (1988). Optical and photoreceptor immaturities limit the spatial and chromatic vision of human neonates. Journal of the Optical Society of America, 5(12), 2059-2079. https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSAA.5.002059
  7. ^ Goulart, P. R., Bandeira, M. L., Tsubota, D., Oiwa, N. N., Costa, M. F., & Ventura, D. F. (2008). A computer-controlled color vision test for children based on the Cambridge Colour Test. Visual Neuroscience, 25(3), 445-450. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952523808080589
  8. ^ Dewar, G. (2020, October). The newborn senses: what can babies feel, see, hear, smell, and taste? Parenting Science. https://parentingscience.com/newborn-senses/
  9. ^ Bushnell, I. W. R., Sai, F., & Mullin, J. T. (1989). Neonatal recognition of the mother's face. British journal of developmental psychology, 7(1), 3-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1989.tb00784.x
  10. ^ Bushnell, I. W. R., Sai, F., & Mullin, J. T. (1989). Neonatal recognition of the mother's face. British journal of developmental psychology, 7(1), 3-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1989.tb00784.x
  11. ^ Sturm, R. A., & Larsson, M. (2009). Genetics of human iris colour and patterns. Pigment cell & melanoma research, 22(5), 544-562. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-148X.2009.00606.x
  12. ^ Torchia, M.G., and Persaud, T.V.N (2025). The Developing Human, Clinically Oriented Embryology. 12th ed.
  13. ^ Jabbehdari, S., Sinow, C., Ludwig, C. A., Callaway, N. F., & Moshfeghi, D. M. (2020). Colour change in the newborn iris: 2‐year follow‐up of the Newborn Eye Screening Test study.  Acta Ophthalmologica, 98(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/aos.14321
  14. ^ Bito, L. Z., Matheny, A., Cruickshanks, K. J., Nondahl, D. M., & Carino, O. B. (1997). Eye color changes past early childhood: the Louisville Twin Study. Archives of Ophthalmology, 115(5), 659-663. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/article-abstract/642125
Learn more about Gestational Age

Credentialed scientists reviewed all the material on The Voyage of Life for accuracy. Ages are listed in gestational weeks, measured from the first day of the mother’s last menstrual period, unless otherwise noted. This standard medical practice differs from post-conception age, used by embryologists and medical textbooks cited here, which starts at conception, about two weeks later.

Medical art animation was used to provide a schematic representation of fetal development, with some features, including timing, not to scale. The animation was chosen as an ethically uncompromised guide to fetal development. There are many real human images at each developmental age showing the most accurate fetal forms throughout development. A concerted effort was made to use images and material in which the human embryo or fetus did not undergo any known harm.

Page last updated on August 7, 2026