But everyone in Skyrim seems to be after something. One of your first quests is literally slandering someone for “love” (though Faendal is clearly better than Sven), and it doesn’t get much better after that. What I mean is, it makes no sense to look for the good in others in Skyrim. Instead, you should just get a mod to make your eyes ravishingly beautiful – or give the entire Skyrim population a deep and meaningful gaze. Ahh, if only real life was this easy.
15. Authentic Eyes
Check Out This Mod Eyes in vanilla Skyrim have a slightly plastic look that doesn’t look too bad with the base game’s graphics but becomes more noticeable as you improve the visuals. One reason is that the eye textures are extremely bright. This might help make your character’s eye color pop out, but they can look like a doll’s beady eyes in some situations. Authentic Eyes by Axeface aims to fix this with all-new realistic eye textures that give your character a more “human” gaze (though it also affects Khajiit, Argonians, and Elves). It doesn’t only change the colors but the way light bounces off the eyeball This makes them twinkle beautifully under the proper lighting without glowing in the dark like vanilla eyes.
14. Eyes Clipping Fix
Check Out This Mod If you get up now and look at your face in the mirror, you’ll notice a tiny pink nodule of flesh near your eyes’ inner corner. That’s called the lacrimal caruncle, and for some reason, characters in Skyrim have a pointy one. Creator Artsick was tired of even the most high-definition eye textures looking unrealistic thanks to this bizarre anatomical hiccup, so they made a little patch to fix it. The problem was caused by a faulty eye mesh that conflicted with the inner eye geometry. The lacrimal caruncle can fully render and look nice and normal by removing the conflict.
13. Eye Normal Map Fix
Check Out This Mod One of the most significant differences between real-world eyes and their Skyrim counterpart is how the iris and pupil reflect light. In real life, irises look concave – like colorful craters digging into the eye. On the other hand, Skyrim’s irises have a convex curvature and reflect light unnaturally. This contributes to vanilla Skyrim eyes looking like a doll’s plastic eyeball, but it can be fixed easily with this mod by Mr. Dave. The patch works by changing the 3D mapping of the iris, so the game treats it as concave and, therefore, renders a more realistic eye. It works for all races and shouldn’t conflict with most custom eye mods.
12. Heterochromia Reborn
Check Out This Mod Giving your Dragonborn a pair of mismatched eyes is a tempting choice for those of us who like mysterious characters with a dark past. Heterochromia Reborn by NerevarineKhajiit makes this a possibility in Skyrim by giving each eye its own slider in character creation (and RaceMenu). It also makes all eyes available to all races out of the box, meaning you could give your Nord character Argonian or Khajiit eyes. The mod shines when you expand your eye texture repertoire through other mods. It lets you mix and match custom eyes too, so you’ll never run out of heterochromia possibilities.
11. Natural Eyes
Check Out This Mod Nevenbridge’s Natural Eyes was one of the first major custom eye collections, and it remains a strong choice if you’re looking for realism – especially when it comes to beast races. This mod was created by looking at pictures of real eyes and painstakingly reproducing them as faithfully as humanly possible. It’s especially noticeable on Khajiit and Argonians, whose eyes look authentically feline and reptilian.
10. Starsight Eyes
Check Out This Mod Realism is great, but sometimes, you want your character to look as unnatural as possible. Artsick’s Starsight Eyes is the perfect way to make that happen. This bag of eyeballs introduces 51 new eye textures to the game. The first few are relatively normal – maybe a bit brighter than usual – but you start finding eyes with magic seals, mandalas, and unique sclera colors as you go deeper. These eyes will leave no doubt as to the power of your Dragonborn. Nothing says “I’m hiding the power of gods” like eyes with the brightness of the sun or psychedelic geometric patterns.
9. Mikan Eyes
Check Out This Mod If you’re looking for dreamy and sparkly eyes fit for an anime character, check out Mikan Eyes by Nerune. While it does include several attractive eye colors you could picture finding in real life, this mod shines for its more creative additions to your eye variety. Unnaturally bright and starry eyes are a dime a dozen in this pack, and they’re the main attraction for me. If your character hides intense magical power within, these will help you show it off.
8. The Eyes of Beauty – Vampire Eyes
Check Out This Mod Traditionally, we think of vampires as mysterious and seductive beings whose deep gaze is enough to enthrall a weak mind. If you’re going to hypnotize someone with your gaze, you’ll need beautiful eyes people actually want to stare into. Unfortunately, Skyrim vampires have had hideous yellow eyes since the release of the Dawnguard DLC. That’s where these vampire eyes by LogRaam come in. This pack includes both red and blue vampire eyes in glowing and non-glowing varieties. The textures are detailed and beautiful enough to give up your soul for just one more minute of admiring their beauty.
7. Elemental Eyes
Check Out This Mod The eyes are the soul’s window – and if you’re the Dragonborn, that’s a powerful Dragon’s soul. As such, it’s only fair for your Dragonborn to have unique, attention-grabbing eyes that reveal their almost divine nature. Elemental Eyes by Achintyagk offers a varied collection of bright, power-infused eyes inspired by the elements. There’s flaming red, lightning purple, chilling blue, earthy yellow, etc. I love Elemental Eyes because it plays with the color of the sclera (white part of the eye), making it black or giving it a rock-like texture for uniquely fierce eyes.
6. Summer’s Custom Eyes
Check Out This Mod Walking the line between maintaining a degree of realism and breathing life into a fantasy world can be challenging. Summer’s Custom Eyes helps achieve this with gorgeous eyes that’ll supercharge your character creation and help you make a fantastical Dragonborn. While most of these eyes seem more or less “normal,” there are some unique textures like red/green gradients and unusually intense turquoise that help your imagination run wild. With 36 all-new eye colors that cover both “regular” and “magical” gazes, you can download this mod and forget about your eye color struggles for the foreseeable future.
5. Kala’s Eyes
Check Out This Mod Kala’s Eyes is another fabulous mod introducing a whopping 108 different eye color combinations to your Skyrim. Along with the usual suspects like amber, blue, and green, this mod introduces surprising hues like golden red, pink, and violet. You’ll even find some eyes with uneven coloring – and I don’t mean regular heterochromia where one eye is different from the other. Specifically, this mod includes changing colors in individual eyeballs, which is unusual and looks fantastic when you zoom into your character’s face and appreciate the detail. The mod also couples some colors with white eyelashes for added variety. It definitely gives a person’s gaze very distinguishable energy. It’s exotic and makes you want to know more.
4. Cherry Eyes
Check Out This Mod Anime characters are known for their large colorful eyes full of hope and sparkles – and Cherry Eyes by CherryMods does a great job of translating that to Skyrim. Their strategy is simple: Instead of copying anime eyes, these designs were inspired by cosplayers and their colorful contact lenses. This mod works much better with the realistic human proportions of Skyrim and opens the doors for some amazing anime-based characters. And with this installed you’ll get a whopping 83 different eye colors and textures to make your character’s gaze bright and vibrant.
3. Argonian & Khajiit Fabulook Eyes
Check Out This Mod Beast races in Skyrim need help to reach their full potential. But most eye mods just expect you to put human eyes on your cats and lizards. Argonian & Khajiit Fabulook Eyes is the best beast-specific eye collection around, with incredible detail and a wide variety of eye styles. Modders can put more creativity into beast eyes due to their unique biology. Whereas most humans have round pupils, cats and lizards vary a lot from species to species – and so can Khajiit and Argonians. With seven different eye textures and eight colors, this mod offers an abundant 112 options. It also features Inigo’s eyes from the famous Khajiit follower mod.
2. The Eyes of Beauty
Check Out This Mod The Eyes of Beauty by LogRaam has been the golden standard against which Skyrim eye mods are measured since its original release in March 2012 – and the Special Edition version remains just as popular. This mod can replace all NPC eyes with a more aesthetically pleasing high-resolution version or focus only on the player character. It also expands customization with some new eye textures featuring heterochromia and marked racial differences. Try this out if you want a great mod that’s compatible with basically every other Skyrim mod and won’t give you trouble.
1. Improved Eyes
Check Out This Mod Nazenn’s Improved Eyes sets itself apart by offering something for everyone. Humans, Elves, Orcs, Khajiit, and Argonians are all well-represented with various detailed eye textures in every color of the rainbow. If you look deep into somebody’s eyes, you’ll see that the iris is far from a solid color. It’s a complex geography of streaks and swirls specific to each person – similar to a fingerprint. This mod amazed me with the detail and realism that went into the iris. The creator took the time to recreate all the quirks and “imperfections” you’d find in regular eyes, making this one of the most realistic eye mods around. It also gives Orcs a very distinctive “scaly” eye texture with a unique pupil shape, which almost no other mod does.
