Also described as: deep blue eyes, navy eyes, midnight blue eyes
A deep, saturated blue with noticeably more depth than a pale blue, frequently with a strong dark limbal ring that makes the iris look sharply defined. The fibre structure is less visible than in pale blue because there is more to look at in the colour itself.
typical range
An illustrative approximation only — a flat swatch cannot reproduce the depth and scattering of a real iris.
Cool and comparatively deep; occasionally with a faint violet or steel cast.
How dark the limbal ring is and how much depth the blue carries across the iris.
More stable than the paler blue categories, but in low light the depth can collapse and the eyes read as almost neutral dark.
Prone to under-exposure. A camera metering for a bright scene will frequently render dark blue irises as near-black, losing the colour entirely.
Blue eyes are reported with notably higher prevalence in Northern and Eastern Europe than in most other studied world regions, though exact figures vary between sources.
Regional boundaries in the underlying literature are not perfectly consistent, and precise percentages vary between individual studies. Presented here as a directional, well-corroborated pattern rather than one exact figure.
Styling ideas below are optional and editorial — never rules, and never a claim that one colour choice is objectively correct for anyone.
Confidence: medium. Geographic scope: Part of the broad blue category, reported at markedly higher frequency in northern and eastern European populations.