What causes red hair?

Red hair is caused by a special kind of color pigment that lives inside your hair cells.

Imagine your hair is like paint, most people have a blue or black paint, which makes their hair look dark. But if you have red hair, it's like your hair has red paint instead! That’s because you have a lot of a pigment called melanin, but it's the type of melanin that matters.

Your body gets its color instructions from something called genes. Think of genes like recipes, they tell your body what kind of pigment to make. If you get the "red hair" recipe from one or both of your parents, your hair will be red!

Sometimes, it's like getting a special mix: if you have a little bit of the red recipe and a lot of the black recipe, your hair might be brown, but if you have mostly red, it shines bright like a fire engine!