Answer · Eye area
How do I find my eye shape?
Look straight ahead in a mirror or an eye-level photo and check two things: how long your eye opening is compared with how tall, and whether the outer corner sits higher, level or lower than the inner. Long and tapered is almond, short and tall is round, a clearly raised outer corner is upturned, a lowered one downturned.
Eye shape, spacing and the surrounding frame.
Explore eye areaThe two checks
- Length against height. Compare the width of the opening, corner to corner, with its height at the middle. A long, low opening with tapered ends reads almond, or narrow if very little lid shows. A shorter, taller opening where more of the iris circle shows reads round.
- The slope. Draw an imaginary line from the inner corner to the outer. Clearly up is upturned, clearly down is downturned. A slight rise is the ordinary adult case and still counts as almond.
| Shape | Length to height | Slope |
|---|---|---|
| Almond | Long, tapered corners | Neutral to slightly positive |
| Round | Short; more iris shows | Neutral |
| Upturned | Any | Clearly positive |
| Downturned | Any | Clearly negative |
| Narrow | Very long; little lid shows | Neutral |
Two more features are often added on top: hooded lids, where a fold of skin covers the crease, and monolids, with no visible crease. They describe the lid rather than the opening, and the hooded eyes entry covers them.
Get a fair reading
- Eye level, looking straight ahead. Looking up hoods the lids; looking down opens them.
- Head straight. A rolled head flips the slope of one eye.
- Relaxed face. A smile pushes the lower lid up; wide eyes make anything read round.
- No makeup, rested. Liner redraws the corners, and puffy lids fill the outer corner.
The eye shape test does this in your browser from one photo and shows the two bands behind the name. The eye type test goes further and adds the brow, for the social-media labels like fox, doe, hunter and prey.
What the shape is for
Mostly for eyeliner, brow grooming and glasses. No shape is better than another: the attractiveness research supports averageness and symmetry, and almond is called ideal in makeup guides only because it is the average. The opening and the slope are set by bone and ligament, so the shape is structural. The height of the opening is partly workable: puffy lower lids and hooding upper lids change with sleep, salt and allergies, which is why two photos a day apart can land in different bins. If that happens, trust the rested, relaxed one. How do you measure canthal tilt? goes deeper on the slope.