Face shapes: a chart of the seven types

Face shape charts sort faces into six or seven outlines: oval, round, square, oblong, heart, diamond and, on many charts, triangle. This one differs in a way that matters if you plan to use it. Every outline below is computed from the numbers our face shape detector matches your face against, drawn on the outline of the face mesh it measures. The chart and the tool agree, so you can read your result straight off it.

How to read the chart

Each outline is defined by four measurements, the same four the detector takes from your face:

1. Length against width. The dashed vertical line, from the top of the face mesh to the bottom of the chin, divided by the middle line across the cheekbones.
2. Forehead against cheekbones. The top line, across the temples, as a share of the cheekbone width.
3. Jaw against cheekbones. The bottom line, between the jaw corners below the ears, as a share of the cheekbone width.
4. Jaw angle. The angle at the jaw corner (the dot) between the cheekbone and the chin. A smaller angle is a more defined corner; a larger one is a jaw that tapers toward the chin.

These are prototypes, the centre of each category. The detector measures your four numbers, finds the nearest prototype, and reports a confidence that drops toward 0.5 when two are about equally close. A face at 0.55 is genuinely between two shapes, and reading about both is the right response.

One detail trips people up. The top of the mesh sits on the upper forehead, below most hairlines, because the landmark model doesn’t detect hair. So the length figures here run lower than the “one and a half times as long as wide” you’ll read in hair guides, which measure from the hairline. On a face with evenly sized thirds, the hairline adds roughly a fifth to the length: the oval prototype’s 1.15 becomes about 1.4 measured by hand.

The six face shapes

Oval

An oval face is a little longer than it is wide, with a forehead slightly wider than the jaw and jaw corners that curve rather than turn. Styling guides often call oval the “ideal” face shape, mostly because almost any haircut or frame suits it.

There is a plainer reason oval sits at the centre of the chart: it is the average. MediaPipe’s canonical face model, an average face the landmark model is built around, measures almost exactly as the oval prototype on all four numbers. That makes oval the shape a face drifts toward as its features get closer to typical, and the reference the other five are defined against. The oval face shape is the one people search for most, but the label is a description, not a grade.

Often confused with: oblong, when the face is clearly longer, and round, when it is nearly as wide as it is long.

Round

A round face is about as long as it is wide, with the cheekbones the widest line and soft jaw corners. Round faces often have fuller cheeks, and that fullness is soft tissue, not bone, which is why a round result can shift toward oval with weight change or age.

Often confused with: square, which has the same proportions but a defined corner at the jaw. Run a finger along your jaw from the ear to the chin. A clear corner below the ear points to square; one continuous curve points to round.

Square

A square face is short to medium in length, with the forehead and jaw almost as wide as the cheekbones and the most angular jaw corner of the six. The sides of the face run nearly straight down, and the jawline turns sharply toward the chin.

Often confused with: round (same width, softer corners) and oblong. A square face that is clearly long is what some charts call rectangle; the detector files it under oblong.

Oblong

An oblong face is clearly longer than it is wide, with the forehead, cheekbones and jaw at similar widths. It is also called long or rectangular. The long vertical line is the defining feature: the face reads as tall before it reads as anything else, which is why styling advice for oblong faces is mostly about adding width and breaking up length.

Often confused with: oval. The difference is the amount of length and how straight the sides run.

Heart

A heart face is widest across the forehead and cheekbones and tapers to a narrow jaw and a small or pointed chin. It has the widest forehead and the narrowest jaw of the six prototypes. Some charts call it inverted triangle. A widow’s peak often appears in descriptions of heart faces, but the hairline’s shape isn’t part of the measurement.

Often confused with: diamond, when the forehead is narrower, and oval, when the taper is gentle.

Diamond

A diamond face has cheekbones that are clearly the widest point, with both the forehead and the jaw narrow. It is the only outline on the chart that narrows both above and below the cheekbones, which gives the face a distinct angle at the temples and at the jaw.

Often confused with: oval, when the forehead isn’t that narrow, and heart, when the forehead is wider than the jaw by a clear margin.

The seventh shape: triangle, or pear

Many charts add a triangle face, also called pear: a narrow forehead and a jaw that is the widest part of the face, the reverse of heart. It is a fair description of some faces, but the detector doesn’t have a separate class for it. A face like the triangle outline below comes out as square on the detector, or as round when the jaw corners are soft.

If your result says square or round but your jaw is clearly your widest line and your forehead clearly your narrowest, use triangle advice: width and volume higher up, frames with a strong top line.

Other names for the same shapes

• Long, rectangle: oblong.
• Inverted triangle: heart.
• Pear: triangle.
• Egg: oval, the narrow end at the chin.

Which face shape is the most common?

No large study has counted them, and there is a good reason. Face shapes aren’t anthropometric categories; they are a styling vocabulary, and where one shape ends and the next begins depends on who draws the line. What anthropometry does measure is the widths and lengths underneath. Farkas’s international study measured faces from many populations and found those dimensions vary continuously, within groups and between them.

Two practical consequences follow. Most people sit between two shapes rather than in the middle of one, and the label depends on where the borders are drawn. That is why the detector shows a confidence and your four ratios, not only a name. If you want the measurements themselves, the facial ratios calculator shows your thirds, fifths and width ratios drawn on your own face.

Do men and women have different face shapes?

The categories are the same. The averages differ: adult men’s faces tend to have a larger lower face and a broader jaw relative to the cheekbones, and women’s a relatively wider forehead and a narrower jaw. So, all else being equal, a typical man’s face sits nearer the square and oblong prototypes and a typical woman’s nearer oval and heart. Plenty of faces of either sex land anywhere on the chart, and the advice that follows from a shape is the same for both.

Can your face shape change?

The bone changes little in adult life; what covers it does. Weight change adds or removes fullness over the cheeks and along the jaw, which moves a face toward round or away from it. With age the jawline softens as soft tissue descends, so some faces read rounder or longer over the decades.

Day to day, the measurement moves more than the face. Hair over the forehead shortens the length, hair over the cheeks narrows the width, a phone held close distorts the proportions, and a smile widens the lower face. The guide to finding your face shape covers how to get a clean reading, by scan or with a tape measure.

Does face shape affect attractiveness?

Not as a label. Research on how faces are rated points to symmetry, averageness and sex-typical features, not to which category a face belongs to. Our attractiveness test never uses the shape name, although it does use some of the same ratios, such as jaw width against cheekbone width. The facial symmetry guide covers what the evidence says about the features that do carry weight.

What to do with your shape

Face shape is most useful as a short brief for styling choices, and two rules cover most of the advice: contrast the outline, and balance the widest and narrowest lines.

• Glasses: frames that contrast with the face’s lines and match its widest point. The glasses guide explains the frame geometry for every shape.
• Hair: height where a face needs length, width where it needs width, and nothing that frames the widest line. See hairstyles for your face shape, for men and women.
• Beard: a beard can square a soft jaw or lengthen a round face, which the hairstyle guide covers too.