Haircut Depending on Face Shape: Find Yours From One Photo

Nothing in your result is written on the fly. Every tip comes from a rulebook we compiled and checked before any scan ran; the scan only decides which rules apply to you. Here is the order of operations.

The jaw diagram shows the three widths and the jaw angle the classifier reads. Our reference point for each shape is anchored on Google's canonical face model and shifted in the direction the stylist definitions describe. They are our settings, published on our method page, not population averages.

This is the full set of women's rules in our rulebook, condensed into one row per shape. All of it is stylist convention: what working stylists recommend, not something tested in a study. Read across your shape's row, then read the row for your second-closest shape if the finder put the two close together.

Barbers work from the same balancing idea but with shorter sides, so the advice reads differently. Most of it comes from barber Thad Forrester (Art of Manliness) and barber Matty Conrad (GQ Middle East), with the Seattle Times and Inside Out Style filling gaps. Where we found no barber rule, the cell says so rather than guessing. Beard shapes per face shape are on our male face shapes guide.

Face shapes are conventions with soft borders, and the finder says so by showing percentages. When two shapes are close, don't pick one; use the rules they share and skip the ones that conflict. A few common pairs work out like this.

Oval and oblong differ only in length, so both are fine with most cuts, and the oblong rules (a fringe, side width, no tall top) become worth following the closer you lean to oblong. Round and square differ only at the jaw corners, and their advice is nearly identical: height on top, length past the jaw, soft bangs. The one extra square rule is to keep a hem off the jaw line itself. Heart and diamond both want fullness at the chin and jaw; they part ways at the forehead, where a heart face wants the forehead width softened with side-swept bangs and a diamond face wants it built up with fuller temples. Heart and oval share almost everything except heavy blunt bangs, which only the heart rules warn against.

If the finder's top two are far apart in style terms, such as oblong and round, trust the measurement less and the photo more: retake it in even window light from 1 to 1.5 m away, with your hair pulled back, and compare.

Face shape isn't the only thing that changes which cut suits you. Our rulebook also has rules for a tall forehead and for a wide or narrow jaw, and the scanner measures both. It only adds those rules to your list automatically when a measurement falls outside a published typical range that matches how we measure, and for jaw width and upper-third height we haven't found one yet. So today the finder shows these two numbers for context, and the rules are here for you to apply yourself.

Forehead height is the upper third of your face, from hairline to brows, as a share of total face length. It needs your hairline, which the scanner finds with a separate hair-segmentation model, so it's skipped when the hairline is hidden. If your forehead reads tall to you, the stylist rules are: side-swept or curtain bangs, or some hair brought forward onto the forehead, and no strict center part or slicked-back style (Matrix, TODAY, InStyle, GQ Middle East). Our big forehead guide explains how the upper third is measured.

Jaw width is your jaw as a share of cheekbone width, shown under your shape result. If your jaw is wide for your face, have the hem or layers end below the jaw, never right on it, with soft ends (Revlon Professional, Matrix, InStyle). If it's narrow, add fullness at chin level, such as a wavy chin-to-collarbone bob or lob (Matrix, Cosmopolitan, InStyle).

Hair texture is the one big factor the finder can't measure. The oval-face rules say it outright: pick a cut for your hair texture and lifestyle first. Curls and waves show up inside several shape rules as a way to add width where it's wanted, such as waves for heart and oblong faces and curls to soften a square jaw. A stylist who sees your hair in person will always know more about texture than a photo can.

The published advice is consistent on most shapes, but not all. Rather than hide the splits, here they are, so you can decide which goal you're after.

Stylists think in lines and lengths, not shape names, so translate your result into instructions they can act on.

The finder is only as good as the photo, and small things move the widths it reads. On one of our own test selfies, with the head turned about 10° and smiling, the raw asymmetry read 4.70% of face width; after pose correction it read 1.06%, and the quality check flagged both the head turn and the smile. Width ratios move with pose in the same way, which is why pose correction runs before anything is measured and why each number carries a ± range.

Before you scan: pull your hair back off your forehead and away from your jaw (stylist convention), take your glasses off (optician convention), keep a neutral face with your mouth closed, and stand in even window light (photographer convention). Prop the phone about 1 to 1.5 m away at eye level and use the timer: Ward and colleagues (2018) modelled a camera about 30 cm from the face making the nasal base look roughly 30% wider than at 1.5 m, which skews width ratios (research-supported). Then switch on the Outline and Widths layers to see exactly what was measured before you trust any haircut depending on face shape, ours included.