Twelve facial proportions from a single photo: facial width-to-height, midface, jaw and forehead against the cheekbones, eye and pupil spacing, and the nose, mouth and lip ratios.
Choose one clear, front-on photo
Looking at the camera, even light, hair off your forehead, no glasses.
Your photo never leaves your device.
Facial width-to-height (fWHR)
Add a photo and this fills in.
Typically 1.8 to 2.1 on this tool's anchors
Square to the camera, hair back, neutral expression, even light.
Measured in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
The value of a set like this is comparing the same face over time, taken the same way, rather than comparing yourself to a number.
Example
Cheekbone width, over the height from the eyelid line to the upper lip.
This measures twelve proportions from one photo: facial width-to-height, face length to width, jaw and forehead against the cheekbones, eye and pupil spacing, midface and lower-face shares, and the mouth, nose and lip proportions. Each is a ratio, so none depends on the size of your photo, and each prints the formula it used.
Each figure divides one measurement by another, so none depends on your photo's resolution or how far you stood from the camera. That is what makes two photos comparable at all.
One detection pass finds the points, and every ratio on this page is computed from the same set. So the numbers are internally consistent even where they are individually approximate.
Most of these proportions have no population figure we could vet, so this page prints none. Where a range exists in the research it appears next to the measurement with its citation, and nowhere else.
Reference bands are this tool's own, chosen for the landmarks it uses. Where research reports a figure it is given separately, with the source, because the two are different claims. And each one says what actually moves it, which for most facial measurements is the more useful half.
What moves it No attractiveness figure to aim at - the research links fWHR to how threatening a face reads, not how attractive. The skull is fixed; body fat over the cheeks is what moves the measured number.
What moves it Skeletal and fixed. Hair is the lever that changes how it reads - height on a long face, width on a short one.
Head turn, hair and camera distance all move this one.
What moves it Body fat. Facial fat sits over the jaw, and lowering it is what uncovers the width already there. The bone needs a surgeon.
A photo proportion, not a millimetre pupillary distance for glasses.
What moves it 46% is a measured optimum and it is also fixed. Worth knowing as the figure the research converged on, not as something to work toward.
Other midface calculators use different anchors, so their numbers are not interchangeable with this one.
What moves it The proportion is skeletal. How the lower third photographs is not, and that tracks body fat - the one lever on this page worth a month.
Expression moves this. Keep the lips relaxed.
A front photo cannot measure projection. This is length only.
Smiling, pressing or pursing the lips all change it.
This measures twelve facial proportions from a single photo and reports them together, each with the formula it used and the band it compares against.
It exists because measuring one ratio at a time means taking ten photos, and because a set taken from one detection pass is internally consistent in a way ten separate readings are not.
Every one of them prints its formula and its reference band in the section below, so you can see what was divided by what.
Every measurement on this page prints a reference band and a formula. Some also print a research line. The difference between the second and third matters more than any individual figure.
Reference is this calculator’s own. It is the band we compare against for these exact landmarks. It is not a universal ideal, not a population norm and not a clinical threshold. Other tools measuring a similarly named ratio use different anchors, which is why their numbers and ours disagree and why comparing across tools is meaningless.
Research is what a published study reports, with the source named. Two rows carry one. Pallett, Link and Lee found faces rated best with eye-to-mouth distance near 36% of face length and pupils near 46% of face width, and noted those are the proportions of an average face. Our golden ratio calculator goes into that properly.
Merging the two would be the easy thing to do and it would imply our anchors match a paper’s. They usually do not. Keeping them in separate lines is what the evidence standards are for.
The facial thirds test covers the vertical proportions in detail, including the 1985 study that found equal thirds are the exception. The face shape detector turns the width ratios into a category, and the attractiveness test shows how the best-evidenced ones combine.
Proportions between two facial measurements, like width against height or jaw against cheekbone. Because they are ratios rather than distances, they stay comparable between photos taken at different sizes.
The share of your face length taken by the middle zone, from the brow line to the base of the nose. A longer midface is a description of proportion, not a defect.
Pallett and colleagues found faces rated best when the pupils sat about 46% of face width apart. The striking part is what that corresponds to: an average face. So the best-rated spacing is the ordinary one, which is the opposite of how the golden ratio is usually sold.
Every measurement here prints a reference band, and two of them have research behind them: faces rated best with eye-to-mouth distance at about 36% of face length and pupils about 46% of face width, from Pallett and colleagues. The rest are this calculator's own comparison bands for its own landmarks, which is a different and weaker kind of claim, and the page labels which is which.
They are this calculator's own, chosen for the landmarks it uses. They are not universal ideals, population norms or clinical thresholds, and similarly named ratios from other tools use different anchors and are not comparable. Where published research gives a figure it is shown separately, labelled as research, with the source.
Facial width-to-height ratio, cheekbone width over the height from the upper lip to the top of the eyelids. It predicts how threatening a face reads; the popular claim that it measures masculinity failed a 2017 meta-analysis.
Only loosely. Camera, lens and angle all shift these enough that a comparison between two people photographed differently is mostly comparing the photos.
The ones involving soft tissue move with body fat. Everything resting on bone spacing does not change in an adult.
Angle and lens. A phone close to your face enlarges what is nearest it, which is usually the nose, and a head turned slightly compresses one side.
No. This reports proportions as measurements. The golden ratio tool compares your face to 1.618 and then explains what the research actually found instead.
No. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.
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