Black hair is the darkest and most common of all human hair colors globally. It is a dominant genetic trait, and it is found in people of all backgrounds and ethnicities. It has large amounts of eumelanin and is less dense than other hair colors. Black hair is known to be the shiniest of all hair colors. Black hair can be slightly rufous, soft black, or blue-black. Sometimes black hair can appear to shine silver-blue in the sun. In English, black hair is sometimes described as "jet-black" or "raven black". The range of skin colors associated with black hair is vast, ranging from the palest of skin tones to an olive complexion

Olive skin

Olive skin describes a skin color range of some indigenous individuals who are from the Mediterranean and some other parts of Europe, Middle East and regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia. It may often be skin type 3 and 4 on the Fitzpatrick scale. However, this scale measures...

 to dark skin. Black-haired humans can have dark or light eyes.

Distribution

The majority of humans have black hair. This is likely the original hair color of Homo sapiens, and is found in its greatest distribution in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the pre-Columbian Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

. Among European peoples (White people

White people

White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

, Caucasoids), black hair may appear, although most people turn out to have dark brown hair (often mistaken for black) especially among peoples of Southern Europe

Southern Europe

The term Southern Europe, at its most general definition, is used to mean "all countries in the south of Europe". However, the concept, at different times, has had different meanings, providing additional political, linguistic and cultural context to the definition in addition to the typical...

. In West Asia, and North Africa, regardless of ethnolinguistic affiliation, black hair is again very common although other colors may appear. Here it is accompanied by dark brown eyes and olive skin. It is seen also in parts of Western Europe

Western Europe

Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...

 and Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

. Black hair is very scarce in the Baltic littoral, where true blondism is believed to have originated.

Varieties

Black hair comes in a variety of textures. Straight black hair is very common in Europeans, Asians and Native Americans. Curly, wavy, straight, fine, medium, and coarse hair textures are common among all racialized groups. Within African populations, hair textures vary greatly. Many people of African descent have diverse hair textures ranging from afro-textured hair (the most common), to straight or wavy.