Diamond Face Shape for Men, How to Tell and Where Hair and Beard Add Width

How to See Whether Your Face Reads as Diamond

Set up once

Stand square to a mirror in even light, chin level, expression relaxed, head upright and facing straight ahead.

Keep your expression neutral, because a smile lifts and broadens the cheeks and will exaggerate the width you are trying to judge.

Push your hair back off your forehead, since this reading needs your forehead to be narrower than your cheekbones and hair at the temples produces that result on any face.

Diamond and the Names Next to It

These names come from barbering and grooming writing rather than one agreed standard, so the borders are editorial conventions and this site states the convention it uses.

Read whichever comparison matches what you found ambiguous, and read two guides rather than forcing a single answer.

Decide What You Want Before You Decide What to Wear

Most advice for this outline sets out to add width at both ends, and that aim is a preference rather than a requirement.

You can reduce the contrast, which means width at the forehead and temples above and visible weight at the chin and jaw below.

You can leave the contrast alone, which means hair kept close at the temples and a beard kept short, so the cheekbones stay the widest span in your outline.

Notice which end you actually mind, because a narrow forehead and a narrow jaw take completely different remedies and few readers want both.

Hair for Width at the Forehead and Height at the Crown

The haircuts collected for diamond faces mostly aim at the narrower upper face, and they do it in two different places that are worth naming separately.

Width at the temples and a little length falling at the forehead narrow the gap between your forehead and your cheekbones, while height at the crown lengthens the outline rather than adding width at the top, so a quiff or a pompadour does not address the ranking you read even though both are often recommended for it.

A brief for reducing the contrast sounds like this. Leave weight and texture through the temples rather than taking the sides in tight, and let a little length sit forward at the front instead of sweeping everything back.

If you would rather keep the cheekbones as the widest span, the opposite brief is short sides taken close through the temples with the length kept on top.

Then check what your own hair will actually do, because that is what decides which of these you can keep.

What follows are tendencies rather than rules, because density, curl pattern, length and growth direction all pull separately and your own combination decides the result. Fine or low-density hair usually needs the cut, and often some drying, to hold height or width, and it tends to lose a shape sooner through the day. Dense hair generally holds a shape more readily and can need weight removed so it does not read wider than you wanted. Curly and coily hair often carries width with less work and shrinks as it dries, so agree the finished shape dry rather than wet. Growth direction at your hairline can defeat a fringe or a parting whatever your texture.

Ask how the cut behaves three mornings after a wash, and dry it yourself once before agreeing that it suits you.

Beard Width Low Down, If You Want It

A beard sits on the narrow lower end of this outline and changes that contour directly, and hair long enough to fall past the jaw frames the same area, so the beard styles collected for diamond faces are worth reading closely if the lower face is what you want to change.

Split it into four decisions, which are how long the chin is left, how full the sides are, where the cheek line runs, and where the neckline sits.

Fullness carried out to the sides of the jaw is what adds visible width low down, and a squarer line under the chin broadens the bottom of the outline rather than pointing it, which is the opposite of what a tapered chin beard does.

If you would rather not broaden the jaw, a beard kept short and even leaves the cheekbones leading, and a goatee or chin beard narrows the bottom further still. If your face is also long, note that length at the chin adds to the apparent length as well as to the weight, so treat chin length as its own decision.

Your present growth coverage decides all of it, because width at the sides of the jaw needs density along the jaw line that not every man has, so choose an outline that works with the coverage you have now.

A fade in a beard means a graduated transition with no visible step, which is separate from how long the chin is left, so ask for the two separately; set the neckline in the mirror with your barber rather than by a finger-width rule.

Glasses and What a Frame Can and Cannot Reach

Frames sit across your cheekbones with their top edge near your brow line, so a frame draws the eye to the upper half of your face. It sits well above your jaw and does not change the width of your lower face, though where the eye goes first does affect how the whole outline reads.

Frames add their outline around the eyes. Their width can also change how the upper and lower face look relative to each other, so compare frames on your face rather than assuming they will make your jaw appear wider.

If you want the emphasis higher up, a frame with visible weight along its top edge does that, and if you would rather draw less attention to the middle of your face, a lighter rim and a shallower depth read as quieter.

Fit is the separate question and the one that decides whether you keep wearing them, and it means enough overall width that the arms are not pressing your temples, a bridge that rests on your nose without pinching or sliding, arms that reach your ears at a length that holds, and enough clearance that the rims are not resting on your cheeks when you smile, which is a real nuisance on a face with prominent cheekbones.

The three numbers printed inside an arm are the lens width, the bridge width and the temple length, all in millimetres. They describe the frame rather than your face, and they do not add up to the overall outside width of the frame front, because rims and endpieces vary, so use them to compare frames you have tried rather than as a fit guarantee. Take the prescription and lens questions to an optician, and treat the protection rating on sunglasses as a separate check.

Collar Spread, Point Length and Comfort

A collar sits below your chin and cannot widen your jaw, though a moderate spread draws a horizontal line under a narrow lower face, which is the effect to ask for if that is your goal.

A long narrow point does the opposite by drawing the eye down to the point of your chin, so leave it out if you are trying to broaden the bottom of the outline.

Comfort and band height come before the shape, since a collar that grips will be undone by lunchtime, and the knot needs enough room for your own tie.

For casual shirts and knitwear, the occasion and the jacket over the shirt matter more than your outline does.

Frequently Asked Questions About Diamond Face Shapes

Still Not Sure?

Our quick face shape quiz asks only for comparisons you can make by looking.

The quiz sorts you into the profiles it carries, and because diamond and heart sit next to each other on one comparison, a face with a narrow chin can reasonably land on either.

Treat the result as a starting description, and if it disagrees with your own ranking of the three widths, trust the mirror and read both guides.