How To Pick The Perfect Pair Of Glasses

It can be a bit of an ego hit when a friend has a great pair of shades, but then you find that you just can’t pull them off. I’d like to say that it isn’t you, but it is you. More specifically, it’s the shape of your face. Everyone’s falls into one of a handful of face types. Different styles of glasses go best with certain faces. Once you know what you should be looking for, you’ll be finding great pairs with each try. This guide applies to both regular glasses and sunglasses.

Determining your face’s shape
Take a look at the picture below, if you can instantly identify your type, great! If not, there are a couple of tricks for determining your face shape. For the first one, you will need a dry erase marker or an old bar of soap. Then while facing a mirror, draw on the mirror the outline of your face. Attention, not your head, your face, so, the top of the outline should be at your hairline. What shape did you just draw?

Option two is a little less messy. Grab your phone, take a selfie, then using any sort of photo editor on your phone, draw an outline of your face in the same fashion as the mirror trick. Once you know your shape, jump down to your section to find out what you should be looking for. The same shape also decides which beard suits you, so have a look at our beard styles for oval, oblong, square and round faces too.

Oval
If this is your face shape, you’re probably wondering who these people are that can’t find glasses that look good, as just about every style will fit you! The only exception is perhaps, narrow glasses as they may make you look a little squinty. Otherwise, you only need to worry about shades that fit your hair and style.

Oblong
Oblong faces are basically longer versions of an oval face. I’ve got good news for you, round and large aviator glasses are exactly what you need. The idea is that larger glasses will make your face look shorter and wider.

Top-heavy frames, the pick for diamond faces

Diamond
Diamond faces generally have narrow eyes and jaw line, as well as broad cheekbones. If this is you, feel special, as it’s one of the less common face shapes! Diamonds want top-heavy frames to draw attention to their eyes while taking weight away from the cheekbones.

Square
It’s all about balance; if you’ve got a square shape, you’re at one end of the spectrum. At the other end, circular or oval frames. This will soften your hard angles as well as lengthen your face.

Round
This face type is pretty much the opposite of the square type. Your soft lines need to be balanced out by some hard lines on your glasses. Pick something rectangular.

Heart/triangle
Here you will find broad foreheads, wide cheek bones, and narrow chins. Those in this category need to stay away from the popular aviator glasses. Aviators are bigger on the top than on the bottom, much like your face. As with all the other face types, the goal here is contrast. Try to find some frames that are wide and bottom heavy.