Color Blindness Statistics: How Many People Are Colorblind?

According to Colour Blind Awareness, an estimated 300 million people worldwide are colorblind. For scale, that is roughly the entire population of the United States.

The estimate is derived in a straightforward way: take the accepted prevalence rates — about 8% of men and 0.5% of women, per the National Eye Institute and MedlinePlus Genetics — and multiply them by world population.

Note: the 8% figure specifically describes men of Northern European ancestry. MedlinePlus states plainly that red-green deficiency "has a lower incidence in almost all other populations studied" — see the ethnicity section below.

8% versus 0.5% is one of the largest sex differences in all of human biology, and the reason fits in one sentence: the genes for the red (OPN1LW) and green (OPN1MW) cone pigments both sit on the X chromosome.

Men have one X, so a single faulty copy causes color blindness with no backup. Women have two X chromosomes, and a normal copy on the second X usually compensates — so a woman must inherit a faulty gene on both X chromosomes, meaning her father is colorblind and her mother is at least a carrier. That double requirement produces the roughly 16:1 ratio.

For the full inheritance odds, carrier status, and why color blindness appears to skip generations, read our genetics of color blindness guide, which has a complete probability table for all four parent combinations.

"8% of men are colorblind" conceals something important: that 8% is not uniform. Colour Blind Awareness breaks the 8% of colorblind men down as approximately 5% deuteranomalous, 1% protanomalous, 1% deuteranopes, and 1% protanopes. In other words, well over half of all colorblind men have the mildest form.

Sources: the four-way red-green split comes from Colour Blind Awareness. The tritan figure ("fewer than 1 in 10,000 people worldwide," affecting men and women equally) and the achromatopsia figure (~1 in 30,000) come from MedlinePlus Genetics. The 0.35% female deuteranomaly figure is Colour Blind Awareness's estimate; the remaining female subtypes are too small for sources to break out separately, which is why they report only an overall ~0.5% for women.

The most striking thing in this table is the gap in magnitude between the top rows and the bottom ones: deuteranomaly (5%) is roughly 1,600 times more common than achromatopsia (0.003%). When someone says "I'm colorblind," the statistically likely reality is mild deuteranomaly — not the black-and-white vision movies depict.

For which specific colors each type confuses and how daily life is affected, read the complete guide to types of color blindness, or go straight to the dedicated pages for protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia.

The much-quoted 8% comes with a qualifier that usually gets dropped: it describes men of Northern European ancestry. MedlinePlus Genetics notes that red-green color vision deficiency "has a lower incidence in almost all other populations studied."

The cleanest comparison data comes from the Multi-Ethnic Pediatric Eye Disease Study (MEPEDS), which tested 4,177 Southern California preschoolers (aged 30 to 72 months) who completed color vision testing, using a single protocol — so the ethnic groups can be compared directly, without differences in methodology muddying the picture.

Source: Multi-Ethnic Pediatric Eye Disease Study, published in Ophthalmology, n = 4,177 Southern California preschoolers who completed testing. These figures sit below the adult 8% because preschool screening misses some mild cases — what matters here is the relative ordering between groups, not the absolute values.

Adult population surveys show the same ordering. European Caucasian men run about 8% and women about 0.4%, while men of Chinese and Japanese ancestry fall between 4% and 6.5%. African populations are generally reported at the low end. A reasonable way to summarize:

• Men of Northern European ancestry — about 8%, the highest rate recorded
• Asian men — roughly 4% to 6.5%
• Men of African descent — around 4% or lower

Why the difference? There is no confirmed explanation. The mainstream hypothesis attributes it to genetic drift and founder effects in population history rather than any selective pressure acting on color vision itself.

Of all color blindness statistics, the most remarkable comes from a Pacific atoll smaller than one square mile.

According to MedlinePlus Genetics, on the island of Pingelap in Micronesia, between 4% and 10% of the Pingelapese population has a total absence of color vision. Worldwide, achromatopsia affects about 1 in 30,000 people (0.003%). That makes the island's rate more than a thousand times the global average.

The cause is a textbook founder effect. Around 1775 a devastating typhoon swept Pingelap, and by historical accounts only about 20 people survived. One of them carried the recessive CNGB3 mutation that causes achromatopsia. When an entire population rebuilds from that few founders and then intermarries within a small community for centuries, a mutation that is vanishingly rare everywhere else becomes ordinary.

The island became widely known through neurologist Oliver Sacks's book The Island of the Colorblind (1997), which documented how residents adapt: many can barely see in bright daylight, yet excel at fishing at dusk and by night, because their rod-based vision is not saturated by strong light.

One caution: the 4%–10% Pingelap figure refers to achromatopsia — complete absence of color vision — not ordinary red-green color blindness. Placing it alongside "8% of men are colorblind" is an apples-to-oranges comparison; they are entirely different conditions.

Percentages are hard to feel. Applied to concrete settings, 8% and 0.5% become much more intuitive:

Method: calculated from 8% of men and 0.5% of women assuming an even sex split, giving roughly 4.25% overall. The stadium row uses a flat 4% of 50,000.

That last row is why designers and product managers should care about these numbers. If your interface relies on red versus green to signal success and failure, roughly 800 out of every 10,000 male users cannot reliably see the distinction you are drawing.

The first row explains something else. With only 1 or 2 colorblind boys in a typical class of 30, there are rarely enough for a teacher to notice a pattern. Colour Blind Awareness reports that 40% of colorblind pupils leave school unaware they have the condition. If you suspect it in yourself or your child, our online Ishihara color blindness test screens for it in about two minutes.

If you plan to quote these figures in a paper, report, or presentation, four things are worth knowing first:

• There is no global census — every worldwide figure is prevalence from population studies multiplied by population size. The 300 million number is an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a head count.
• The 8% figure carries an unstated condition — it specifically describes men of Northern European ancestry. Using it to estimate the colorblind population of an Asian or African country will overstate the total noticeably.
• Test methodology changes the answer — Ishihara plates are excellent at catching red-green deficiency but miss blue-yellow types entirely, and studies use different cutoff thresholds. That is why sources report 8%, 8.5%, or occasionally 10% for what sounds like the same measurement.
• Underdiagnosis pushes figures down — mild deuteranomaly often goes undetected for life. True prevalence is more likely slightly higher than reported, not lower.

Practical advice: keep the word "about" when you cite, and name both the source and the population it applies to — for example, "about 8% of men of Northern European ancestry, per MedlinePlus Genetics." That phrasing holds up to scrutiny far better than a deceptively precise-looking number.

For more common questions, see our color blindness FAQ.

1. Colour Blind Awareness — "Colour Blindness" — Source for the ~300 million worldwide estimate, the 1 in 12 men / 1 in 200 women rates, and the “40% of colorblind pupils leave school unaware” figure
2. Colour Blind Awareness — "Types of Colour Blindness" — Source for the breakdown of the 8% into ~5% deuteranomalous, 1% protanomalous, 1% deuteranopes, 1% protanopes, and the ~0.35% female deuteranomaly figure
3. MedlinePlus Genetics — Color Vision Deficiency — Source for 1 in 12 males and 1 in 200 females of Northern European ancestry, the statement that incidence is lower in almost all other populations studied, and tritan deficiency at fewer than 1 in 10,000 with equal sex distribution
4. MedlinePlus Genetics — Achromatopsia — Source for achromatopsia at ~1 in 30,000 worldwide, and for 4% to 10% of the Pingelapese population having a total absence of color vision
5. National Eye Institute (NIH) — Color Blindness — Source for “about 1 in 12 men have color vision deficiency” and for men having a much higher risk than women
6. Xie et al. (2014), Multi-Ethnic Pediatric Eye Disease Study Group — Ophthalmology — Source for the ethnicity breakdown: 5.6% of white boys, 3.1% Asian, 2.6% Hispanic, 1.4% African-American, and 0%–0.5% for girls across all groups (n = 4,177 Southern California preschoolers who completed testing)
7. Birch (2012) — "Worldwide prevalence of red-green color deficiency," Journal of the Optical Society of America A — Source for adult population survey rates: ~8% of European Caucasian men and ~0.4% of women, versus 4% to 6.5% in men of Chinese and Japanese ethnicity
8. GeneReviews (NCBI Bookshelf) — Achromatopsia — Background on the CNGB3 founder mutation underlying the Pingelap achromatopsia cluster