Ideal Facial Ratios: The Full List, Measured

Short answer: most of the list is convention: numbers voted into place on forums, not measured against anyone's ratings. Three items have real studies behind them, and even those give bands, not targets. Every one of them is photo-dependent.

A single thread, copied for a decade, is the source of nearly all of it: about fifteen ratios, each with an "ideal" precise to two decimals, which makes them look measured. Below, each ratio gets four things: what it measures, the forum's ideal, what the literature supports, and whether it can move.

Width ratios

fWHR (facial width-to-height ratio)

Definition. Bizygomatic width, the distance between the widest points of the cheekbones, divided by the height from the upper lip to the brow midpoint. The research papers measure that height to the upper eyelid instead, and the two versions do not return the same number. Forum ideal: 1.8 or higher. Research: this is the one ratio with a genuine literature. Carré and McCormick found it predicted reactive aggression in men, explaining 15% of the variance in the lab and 29% and 9% in two samples of hockey players. That is a dominance finding, not an attractiveness finding, and the effects are small and disputed. Population mean sits near 1.9; faces outside roughly 1.7 to 2.1 read as noticeably long or wide. No study shows 1.8 is a threshold for anything. Can it change? The width is bone. The height moves with brow position and lip posture, the visual width with cheek fullness. The biggest lever is the lens: the same faces shot at different focal lengths changed width-to-height with effect sizes of 3.45 to 4.41. Measure your fWHR at arm's length and again from across the room and you will see it.

Bizygomatic to bigonial (cheekbone to jaw width)

Definition. Cheekbone width divided by the width between the two jaw angles (gonions). Forum ideal: 1.35 in the original thread, but most replies reject that and say the jaw should be 85 to 95% of cheekbone width. The community never agreed. Research: no controlled study links this ratio to ratings; forum convention. What the literature does say is that bigonial width is the worst thing you can measure from a flat photo: in 96 people, photographic jaw width agreed with direct measurement at an ICC of 0.16, off by 9.3 mm on average, against a clinical threshold of 2 mm. The jaw angle is also the most asymmetric point on a normal face, 4.6 mm left to right in a 3D study of 48 adults. Can it change? The bone cannot. The masseter over it moves by about a millimetre with chewing habit; the fat and fluid in front of the angle move with weight and time of day. Head yaw of 5 degrees is enough to distort the width. The jawline tool measures it with head roll removed.

Mouth to nose width

Definition. Distance between the mouth corners divided by the width of the nose at the alar base. Forum ideal: 1.5 to 1.62. Research: this is one of the nine neoclassical canons that Farkas tested on 153 young adults in 1985. The abstract reports that the best-fitting canons matched only 40% and 37% of faces, and that the canons "do not represent the average facial proportions". The 1.62 version is the golden ratio applied by hand and has no study of its own. Can it change? Neither width is trainable. Nose width in a photo is mostly distance: a 12-inch selfie makes the nose base read about 30% wider than a portrait taken further back. Smiling widens the mouth, which is why the golden ratio tool measures at rest.

Nose width to cheekbone width

Definition. Alar width as a fraction of bizygomatic width. Forum ideal: under one part in 3.5. Research: the closest canon, nose width equals one quarter of face width, was one of Farkas's two best performers, and still fit only 37% of normal faces. That is a description of typical variation, not an ideal. Can it change? Bone and cartilage. The photo distance effect above applies fully.

Vertical ratios

Facial thirds

Definition. Hairline to brow, brow to nose base, nose base to chin, each as a share of face height. Forum ideal: equal. Research: Farkas tested the equal-thirds canon and found the vertical profile proportions had the poorest fit of all nine canons. Equal thirds are a drawing convention; a normal face is usually a few points off, with a slightly longer lower third in men. The often-quoted percentages for which third is "most often" affected by asymmetry come from a jaw-deformity clinic of 1,460 patients, not the general population. Can it change? The upper third depends on where you put the hairline, the least certain landmark on any face. The middle and lower thirds are bone. Chin-down posture shortens the lower third in a photo. Read yours on the facial thirds tool.

Lower to full face ratio

Definition. Nasion (the bridge point between the eyes) to chin, divided by hairline to chin. Forum ideal: 0.62 or higher, the golden ratio again. Research: no controlled study; forum convention. It shares the hairline problem above, so the denominator is an estimate on most photos.

Midface ratio

Definition used by Symmi. Interpupillary distance divided by the vertical height from the pupil line to the top of the upper lip. Other definitions use different landmarks. Forum ideal: 1.0 to 1.1. Research: no attractiveness study defines this ratio; forum convention. The ratio describes height relative to pupil span; either distance can affect it. The band is a preference, not a finding. Can it change? Photo pose, camera perspective, expression and landmark placement can change the estimate. The midface ratio calculator draws both distances and explains the result. A photo ratio does not establish a change in bone anatomy.

Forehead height

Definition. Hairline to brow. Forum ideal: "three fingers". Research: none; it is a rule of thumb, literally. It also depends on whose fingers.

Head height to cheekbone width

Definition. Full head height divided by bizygomatic width. Forum ideal: 1.35. Research: no controlled study; forum convention. Hair makes the top of the skull unmeasurable in almost every photo.

Eye ratios

Canthal tilt

Definition. The angle of the line from the inner eye corner (medial canthus) to the outer corner (lateral canthus), relative to horizontal; outer corner higher is positive. Forum ideal: 4 to 6 degrees. Research: the study usually cited is Bashour and Geist, 2007. It is real, but not what the forum thinks: raters preferred female faces whose medial canthal tilt had been accentuated in Photoshop 93% of the time. No degree threshold, no male faces, a manipulation rather than a natural range. A real cue, and a made-up number. Landmark-based tools also read about 3 degrees lower than calliper measurement because they use the corner point rather than the lid margin, so a forum "6" and a landmark "3" can be the same eye. Can it change? The angle is set by the orbit. What changes is how it reads: a raised brow or puffiness at the outer corner flattens it, and head roll in the photo adds or subtracts directly. The canthal tilt tool levels the pupils before measuring.

Palpebral fissure length to height

Definition. Eye opening, corner to corner, divided by its height at the widest point. Forum ideal: 3.0 to 3.5. Research: no controlled study of this ratio against ratings; forum convention. Can it change? Height moves with fatigue, brow position and expression all day. Length does not.

Eye separation ratio (ESR)

Definition. Interpupillary distance divided by bizygomatic width. Forum ideal: 0.45 to 0.47. Research: the neoclassical version, eyes one eye-width apart, is one of the horizontal canons Farkas tested; the ratio as the forum writes it has no study. Can it change? No. It is the most fixed number on the list.

Eye-mouth-eye angle (EME)

Definition. The angle at the mouth centre between lines drawn to each pupil. Forum ideal: 47 to 50 degrees. Research: no controlled study; forum convention. Its inputs are the two most fixed distances on the face, so it changes only with camera distance and with how much the mouth is open.

Eyebrow tilt

Definition. Angle of the line from brow head to brow tail. Forum ideal: 5 to 6 degrees. Research: none; and in a clinic study of 100 eyelid-surgery patients, 93% had at least one brow or eyelid asymmetry over a millimetre, so the two brows usually give two answers. Can it change? Muscle. Brows lift and drop with expression and are the easiest landmark to move.

Lip and chin

Lower to upper lip height

Definition. Vermilion height of the lower lip divided by the upper. Forum ideal: 1.62. Research: a real study exists. Popenko and colleagues had 428 raters rank morphed images of 20 white women and found an upper-to-lower ratio of 1:2 most attractive and 2:1 least. That is a lower lip twice the upper, not 1.62 times, in one population and one sex. It is the second of the three items with evidence, and it argues with the forum number. Can it change? Lip fullness is soft tissue and moves with hydration, temperature and expression by the hour. Anything more is a clinic decision.

Chin to philtrum

Definition. Height from lower lip to chin point divided by the philtrum, nose base to upper lip. Forum ideal: 2.0 to 2.25, with arguments pushing it to 3. Research: no controlled study; forum convention. The chin height itself is a useful number: 60 to 72% of the lower third is typical, and a short chin is what reads as recessed on a front view. Can it change? Bone. Posture moves the chin point in a photo; nothing you do moves it in the mirror.

Profile only

Gonial angle

Definition. The angle at the jaw corner between the ramus (the vertical part of the mandible) and the mandibular body, seen from the side. Forum ideal: 115 to 130 degrees. Research: no controlled attractiveness study of the angle itself; forum convention. It is also a bone angle read through soft tissue, and 2D shape measurements like it are distorted by head roll and yaw. Can it change? No. Fat over the angle changes how sharp it looks, not what it is.

Cervicomental (submental-cervical) angle

Definition. The angle under the chin between the underside of the jaw and the front of the neck. Forum ideal: 105 to 120 degrees. Research: this is the third item with a real study, and it is the best of the three. Naini and colleagues changed the angle on a profile silhouette in steps from 90 to 130 degrees and had 75 laypeople, 75 orthognathic patients and 35 clinicians rate each. 90 to 105 degrees was rated acceptable. Angles up to 120 were slightly unattractive to laypeople and clinicians and very unattractive to patients; by 125 to 130 every group rated them very unattractive. The forum's band sits mostly in the zone the study rated slightly unattractive. Can it change? The most changeable item on the list: the angle is drawn by fat and fluid under the chin and by head position. Chin forward and level opens it; head-forward posture and submental fat close it. It is also the reading most sensitive to a photo taken from below.

Measure yours

Every number above is photo-dependent before it is face-dependent: focal length changes width ratios, distance changes the nose, roll changes the tilt, yaw changes the jaw. A reading only means something on a level, straight-on capture at portrait distance, and it means most against your own earlier reading rather than a forum's decimal.

The facial ratios tool returns the whole list from one photo, in the browser, with the typical band beside each. For single readings with more detail there are midface ratio, fWHR, canthal tilt, facial thirds, golden ratio and jawline.

Sources

• Carré JM, McCormick CM. In your face: facial metrics predict aggressive behaviour in the laboratory and in varsity and professional hockey players. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2008. PubMed 18713717 — links facial width-to-height ratio with aggression in a lab task and with penalty minutes in hockey players.
• Farkas LG, Hreczko TA, Kolar JC, et al. Vertical and horizontal proportions of the face in young adult North American Caucasians: revision of neoclassical canons. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 1985. PubMed 3883374 — tested the neoclassical facial canons on measured young adults; most faces did not fit them.
• Bashour M, Geist C. Is medial canthal tilt a powerful cue for facial attractiveness? Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 2007. PubMed 17237692 — raters compared female face photos with and without an edited medial canthal tilt.
• Popenko NA, Tripathi PB, Devcic Z, et al. A quantitative approach to determining the ideal female lip aesthetic and its effect on facial attractiveness. JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, 2017. PubMed 28208179 — raters ranked morphed lip proportions; a 1:2 upper-to-lower lip ratio scored best.
• Naini FB, Cobourne MT, McDonald F, et al. Submental-cervical angle: perceived attractiveness and threshold values of desire for surgery. Journal of Maxillofacial and Oral Surgery, 2016. PubMed 27833339 — laypeople, patients and clinicians rated profile silhouettes with the angle varied from 90 to 130 degrees.
• Třebický V, Fialová J, Kleisner K, et al. Focal length affects depicted shape and perception of facial images. PLoS ONE, 2016. PubMed 26894832 — the same 45 faces shot at 50, 85 and 105 mm; the shortest lens gave smaller fWHR and lower attractiveness ratings.
• Ward B, Ward M, Fried O, et al. Nasal distortion in short-distance photographs: the selfie effect. JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, 2018. PubMed 29494735 — a mathematical model of how short camera distances enlarge the apparent nose.
• Lim YC, Abdul Shakor AS, Shaharudin R. Reliability and accuracy of 2D photogrammetry: a comparison with direct measurement. Frontiers in Public Health, 2022. PubMed 35155360 — in 96 adults, photo-based bigonial and bizygomatic breadths differed from calliper measurement by a clinically meaningful amount.
• Gateño J, Xia JJ, Teichgraeber JF. Effect of facial asymmetry on 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional cephalometric measurements. Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, 2011. PubMed 21353927 — modelling showed 2D shape measurements are distorted by roll and yaw, while the same 3D measurements are not.
• Hwang HS, Yuan D, Jeong KH, et al. Three-dimensional soft tissue analysis for the evaluation of facial asymmetry in normal occlusion individuals. Korean Journal of Orthodontics, 2012. PubMed 23112933 — left-right differences of 0.6 to 4.6 mm in 48 adults with normal bites, largest toward the lower, outer face.
• Macdonald KI, Mendez AI, Hart RD, et al. Eyelid and brow asymmetry in patients evaluated for upper lid blepharoplasty. Journal of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, 2014. PubMed 25294556 — 93% of 100 consecutive patients had at least one brow or eyelid asymmetry greater than 1 mm.
• Severt TR, Proffit WR. The prevalence of facial asymmetry in the dentofacial deformities population at the University of North Carolina. International Journal of Adult Orthodontics and Orthognathic Surgery, 1997. PubMed 9511487 — of 1,460 clinic patients, 34% had visible asymmetry, affecting the chin far more often than the upper face.