Your skin's pigment is vital to keeping your body healthy. Pigment can vary among individuals, with white and pale-skinned individuals often containing low levels of pigment in their skin and darker ethnicities, such as Asians and Africans, featuring much higher concentrations. However, pigment levels adapt to your sun exposure and can fluctuate--tanning is a process that activates pigmentation and increases pigment production.
Function
The primary goal of skin pigmentation is to protect the skin from sun damage. For this reason, people with more exposure to sunlight tend to have darker skin--sunlight exposure triggers the production of pigment in the skin, in many cases darkening the skin--this reaction is most evident in how it tends to darken during the summer months, when skin is more often exposed to the sun and its rays are stronger.
Creation
The color of your skin is determined by melanin, a skin pigment. Melanin is produced by special cells in your skin called melanocyte cells. Melanin can be produced through stimulation from the sun's rays, in addition to its natural occurrence in the skin. The more melanin your skin has, the darker it will appear, although the tone of your skin does not have to be even all the way around.
Concentration
Several different things can develop in the skin to create imbalanced pigmentation throughout the skin. Many people experience birth marks, sometimes called beauty marks if they are on the face, which can be darker in appearance. There is no known cause for this coagulation of melanin, which is at a much-higher concentration than other locations. Freckles are also spots featuring higher concentrations of melanin. Some pregnant women also develop darkened features on their face, although these go away over time.
Location
Pigment is not present throughout your skin--it only exists in the epidermis at the exterior of your skin and is not present in the dermis. This is because the light rays which pigments combat are not as prevalent in the lower layers of the skin. Pigment resides in each of the three sub-layers of the epidermis, according to Discovery Health.
Disorders
Problems with pigmentation can occur in some individuals. The most common of these are hyperpigmentation and hypopigmentation. Hyperpigmentation is the product of over-reactive melanin production, which can occur for several reasons, such as an injury to the location or causes of inflammation. It can also occur due to the use of some drugs. Hypopigmentation is characterized by a lack of pigment production--this is what occurs in albino people, and it can worsen over time.
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