How To: Determine Your Face Shape

When determining your face shape, there’s no need to get out a ruler and pen. It’s fairly simple to figure out what facial shape you have, and keep in mind your face can even be considered more than one shape. But the reason it’s important to understand the symmetry of your face is so you can choose hair and makeup styles that accentuate your best features.

How to determine your facial shape:
There are a couple ways to determine your face shape. One is to use an old lipstick and draw around the outline of your face, look in the mirror, and see what shape it made..but that’s too messy for my liking! I find the easiest way to determine your shape is by looking at a head-on photograph of yourself, preferably one where you aren’t smiling. Once you have that, you can examine your facial features and compare them with the traits of each of these facial shapes:

Oval: The jawline is rounded and slightly more narrow than the width between the temples. The hairline width is also slightly wider than the lower half of the face. The width between the cheekbones is the farthest apart.

Oblong: Similar to the square shape, but the face is noticeably longer than it is wide. The cheekbones tend to be flatter with a long chin or forehead.

Round: The face has a fuller appearance with curvier rather than sharp angles. The width is usually equal (or close) to the length.

Square: The width and height of face are nearly equal and the jawline is angled or square-like. The width of the jawline should be roughly equal to the width of the forehead.

Triangle: With this shape, there is a regular triangle and an inverted triangle shape. An inverted triangle face shape has high cheekbones, a broader forehead, and a narrower chin. A regular triangle has less prominent cheekbones with a narrow forehead and wider jawline.

Diamond: The width between the cheekbones is the widest of the face (narrow chin and forehead). It is similar to oval, but with sharper angles.

Heart: Wide cheekbones, pointy chin, and a slight dip in the hairline (making a heart shape).

Rectangle: Similar to the square shape with the angled jawline and equal width between the forehead and jawline, but the length of the face is noticeably greater than the width.

As you can see below, I have an oval shape. My jawline is rounded and slightly more narrow than the width between my temples. The width of my hairline is slightly wider than the lower half of my face.

Stay tuned for my next post on how to accentuate your best features depending on your facial shape! The first step was determining your unique shape. The next? Being the best YOU you can be! xoxo