Downturned Eyes: What They Are and How to Tell

An eye is downturned when its outer corner sits lower than its inner corner. Drawn as a line from corner to corner, the eye slopes down toward the temple, and the lids usually follow that slope. In measurement terms this is a negative canthal tilt: the angle of that corner line below level.

The term is also used more loosely in makeup guides for eyes whose outer lid or lashes droop even when the corners are level, for example when a hooded lid hangs lower at the outer end. On this page, downturned means the corners themselves, because that is what can be measured.

Look straight into a mirror or a front camera with your head level:

• Find the inner and outer corner of one eye, where the upper and lower lids meet.
• Imagine a line between them, or hold a thin straight edge across. If the outer end sits lower than the inner end, the eye is downturned.
• Check both eyes; a difference of a degree or two between them is normal.
• For a number, the canthal tilt calculator measures each eye's angle from a photo and corrects for head tilt.

Each example eye was measured by the same analyzer our tools use. Tilt is the angle from the inner to the outer corner, levelled on the line between the irises; the eye ratio is how open the eye is compared with its width; brow-to-lid space is the distance from the lower edge of the brow to the upper lid, also compared with the width.

Most adults have outer corners a few degrees above the inner corners, so a level or negative angle stands out. The example on this page measures −1.9° on both eyes. Our tools treat anything below −1° as negative, between −1° and +1° as neutral, and above +1° as positive, so this example reads as negative, or downturned.

Generating this example took several attempts: image models tend to draw lifted eye corners, so the downturned portrait was made by editing a near-level one and then checking that the measured angle was really negative. For more on the angle itself, read negative canthal tilt.

Hooded eyes have a fold of skin over the upper lid. When the fold is heavier at the outer end, it can make level eyes look downturned. The corner line tells them apart: in downturned eyes the corners themselves slope; in hooded eyes the corners can be level while the fold droops. See hooded eyes for how to check.

Makeup guides for downturned eyes usually aim to lift the outer corner visually: liner that thickens and flicks upward at the outer third rather than following the lower lash line down, curled lashes with more length at the outer edge, and shadow blended up and out instead of down. Heavy liner along the outer lower lash line tends to emphasise the downward slope.

For glasses, frames with an upswept outer edge, such as soft cat-eye shapes, add lift. These are styling choices, not corrections: downturned eyes are a normal variation.