Do men prefer blondes or brunettes?

The debate between blonde vs brunette feels as old as time itself. Maybe not quite so long – scientists reckon that blonde hair started around 10-11,000 years ago.

That’s still a fair old time for blondes and brunettes to have stereotypes grow up around them.

How true are the cliches about women and their hair color? Science seems to enjoy looking into the idea and there’s been a range of studies done on the topic.

Before we get into it, first – full disclosure, your writer is a natural blonde. I will do my level best to maintain journalistic integrity 😉

Second, and more important; every woman is beautiful, and looking and feeling good is more than hair color. It’s still very interesting to see how these things – read: men – work.

With those caveats, we’re going to look at:

• Which hair color will get you more help
• How hair color affects age perceptions
• How often blonde vs brunette get approached in a club
• Which one is seen as better marriage material

And we’ll see how women perceive hair color when there’s data available.

Let’s get into it.

Blonde vs brunette: who gets helped more?

You’d think people would be universally helpful no matter your hair color, right? Think again.

In a French study, they asked five women aged between 20-22 to go out hitchhiking. They were put on a busy stretch of road where lots of people hitchhiked and at different times were asked to wear blonde, brunette, or black wigs.

Turns out, when they had blonde wigs on, men would offer to help them 18% of the time. Might seem pretty low, but when they have black or brunette wigs on, they’d get offered help around 14% of the time.

Interestingly, when women offered a lift to the women, there was no difference in the blonde vs brunette debate.

How age affects choices between blonde and brunette

We’ve looked at how young women with different hair colors get treated, what about women of different ages?

Blonde women are perceived as looking younger, so says a study that was done in Poland. 360 men ages 18 to 46 were shown an assortment of images – all the same woman but at different ages and with different hair colors.

Overall, in the blonde vs brunette debate, blonde women came out as looking younger. The biggest difference in beauty was at the age of 30, where blonde was seen as much more beautiful.

It was generally found that hair color and age were strong determiners of beauty.

The researchers did a second bit of research and also found that, in advertisements, older women were much more likely to dye their hair.

How often do men approach women who are blonde vs brunette?

It’s one thing asking men during a study to rate a woman’s beauty. It’s quite another to test their behavior in the wild.

A British study sent the same women in the same clothes with blonde or brunette dyed hair into London nightclubs. She was told to face the dancefloor, not make eye contact, and not flirt.

Are you surprised that significantly more men approached her when she was blonde?

The same study also ran a survey of men, showing them images of the same woman as a blonde and a brunette. Brunette women were viewed as more…

• Physically attractive
• Intelligent
• Approachable
• Competent
• Arrogant

But blondes were seen as more needy.

Another French study backed up the findings. This time they put their female subject matter in blonde, brunette, brown and red wigs and sent them to go sit in nightclubs. Again, when she was blonde, she got approached more.

This team decided to run the experiment the opposite way, too. They put men in different colored wigs and sent them over to chat up women in bars. Surprisingly, there was no one color that had their advances accepted more than others.

What is kinda interesting in this study are the results for red hair. In both the female and male studies, red-haired women got approached a lot less and red-haired men were accepted much less.  

Who do men want to marry, blondes or brunettes?

UK drug store Superdrug ran a survey to see how men perceived women of different hair colors based on a range of characteristics. The focus of the study was on marriage, with the results showing:

• 54% of men would marry a brunette woman
• 16% of men would marry a blonde woman
• 30% of men had no preference

Why did these men think brunettes were more likely marriage material? When asked about the qualities they associate with both, they said that brunettes were more likely to be:

• Sensible
• Dependable
• Aware of their appearance
• Sexually experimental
• More personable
• Better with money

Whereas blondes are apparently more bubbly and outgoing.

Seems men want to marry raven-haired beauties but aren’t down for chatting them up, giving them a ride, or thinking they’re beautiful in general.

Blonde vs brunette: The verdict

The ideas that blondes have more fun or that gentlemen prefer blondes seem pretty old hat – if your grandma said it can it really still be true?

All the major studies on the topic have focused on white women and white, or at least European men. There’s a whole lot of different men and women out there, so the data could well be missing a trick.

Looking at our own stats here at SinParty, we’ve got about one-third more brunette porn than we do blonde porn. Out of our top ten most-viewed videos, six feature blonde models and four have brunette- or black-haired women. Seems pretty evenly split when it comes to the porn that gets watched.

I guess the final word on the blonde vs brunette debate is this; have whatever hair color you want because someone is always going to be into your look, want to buy the porn you create, or marry or bang you – whichever you’re looking for.