Why is My Beard Red When My Hair Isn't?

If you’ve noticed that somewhere along your beard journey, your facial hair took on a red tinge, you’re not alone. While only a small percentage of humans in the world have red hair, a larger amount have red beards paired with other colored hair. 

What’s the reason for this? It all comes down to genetics.

You might already know that hair color is determined through your genes, dating as far back as your ancestors. The more variations there are in the genealogy, the wider the range is for there to be different hair color combinations in a person. 

Your exact shade of hair is determined by the percentage of melanin you have in it. Melanin is a type of pigment that can be found organically in the body.  There are different type of melanin and the amount varies from person to person.

In Caucasian people, there are two main variants: eumelanine and pheomelanine. Black pigment and red pigment. When you see a dark haired individual, they’ll most likely only contain eumelanine, while fair haired people contain less. Red haired individuals, on the other hand, contain only pheomelanine. If you are one of the people though, who have dark/ fair hair AND a red colored beard, then your genetics may have a mutation on the MC1R gene, which shows itself on chromosome 16 in your DNA. MC1R is largely responsible for the creation of a certain protein that assist with the production of melanin in red hair. There are two different types of heritable MC1R, each from a parent. So how do you get red hair in one place, but not another? This happens if one of those MC1R genes is mutated. One MC1R gene can hold the sequence for brown hair while the other one can hold the sequence for red hair. This theory is similar to the one that tells us why we have different hair textures on different parts of our bodies. 

So that’s it folks! The human body is incredible, isn’t it?