Heart Shaped Face: How to Tell If Your Face Is Heart-Shaped

A heart-shaped face is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. The forehead is about as wide as the cheekbones, and from the cheekbones the jaw runs inward toward a small chin. The outline looks like an inverted triangle with softened corners, which is why some guides call it an inverted triangle face.

The defining measurement is the forehead. Of the faces we used to calibrate our detector, the one generated as heart-shaped had the widest forehead relative to its cheekbones, about 0.91, compared with about 0.86 for most faces. Paired with a narrow jaw and a pointed chin, that wide forehead is what separates heart from the other shapes.

These are the measurements our face shape detector treats as typical of each shape. Widths and length are divided by the cheekbone width, so they compare faces of any size. Real faces vary around these values, and a face between two columns reads as a blend of both shapes.

Pull your hair back from your forehead and temples, then check in a mirror or a straight-on photo:

• Measure across your forehead at the upper temples and across your cheekbones. In a heart-shaped face the two are close.
• Measure across your jaw just above the jaw corners. It should be clearly narrower than both.
• Look at the chin. Heart-shaped faces end in a narrow, often pointed chin.
• If your forehead is clearly narrower than your cheekbones, compare with the diamond face shape.
• If the chin is rounded and the taper is gentle, compare with the oval face shape.

Heart and diamond faces both narrow to a pointed chin. The difference is the forehead: a heart face is wide at the forehead, a diamond face is narrow there, so on a diamond face the cheekbones stand out as the single widest point.

Oval faces taper too, but more gently, and end in a rounded chin. A face with a slightly wide forehead and a soft chin often reads as a blend of heart and oval; both descriptions fit it.

Styling advice for heart-shaped faces aims to balance a wide upper face with a narrow lower face. Side-swept fringes soften the forehead, and cuts that add volume around the jaw and chin, such as chin-length bobs or waves that start below the cheekbones, add width where the face is narrowest. Height and volume at the crown and temples tend to widen the forehead further.

For glasses, frames that are wider at the bottom than the top, light or rimless frames, and rounded shapes keep attention away from the forehead. Heavy, top-heavy frames tend to exaggerate it. These are starting points to try, not rules.

See seven hairstyles for a heart-shaped face, for women and men →

Tilting the head down makes the forehead look larger and the chin smaller, which pushes a reading toward heart. A smile widens the lower face and pushes it away. Hair pulled tight at the temples can also exaggerate the forehead. Take the photo at eye level, with a neutral expression and your head level, and compare two or three readings with the face shape detector.