Editing Human skin color (section)

== Age ==
In hominids, the parts of the body not covered with hair, like the face and the back of the hands, start out pale in infants and turn darker as the skin is exposed to more sun. All human babies are born pale, regardless of what their adult color will be. In humans, melanin production does not peak until after puberty.<ref name=LivCol />

The skin of children becomes darker as they go through [[puberty]] and experience the effects of sex hormones.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Everything You Wanted to Know About Puberty (for Teens) - Nemours KidsHealth |url=https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/puberty.html |access-date=2022-05-24 |website=kidshealth.org}}</ref> This darkening is especially noticeable in the skin of the [[nipple]]s, the [[areola]] of the nipples, the [[labia majora]] in females, and the [[scrotum]] in males. In some people, the [[armpits]] become slightly darker during puberty. The interaction of genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors on skin coloration with age is still not adequately understood, but it is known that men are at their darkest baseline skin color around the age of 30, without considering the effects of tanning.<ref name=LivCol />

Human skin color fades with age. Humans over the age of thirty experience a decrease in melanin-producing cells by about 10% to 20% per decade as melanocyte stem cells gradually die.<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Aging of the Hair Follicle Pigmentation System|journal = International Journal of Trichology|volume = 1|issue = 2|pages = 83–93|pmc = 2938584|year = 2009|last1 = Tobin|first1 = D. J.|pmid = 20927229|doi = 10.4103/0974-7753.58550 | doi-access=free }}</ref> The skin of face and hands has about twice the amount of pigment cells as unexposed areas of the body, as chronic exposure to the sun continues to stimulate melanocytes. The blotchy appearance of skin color in the face and hands of older people is due to the uneven distribution of pigment cells and to changes in the interaction between [[melanocyte]]s and [[keratinocyte]]s.<ref name=LivCol />