Square
face shape

How to recognise it

Hair back, mirror, straight on. A square face is built on even widths and a visible angle, and it is the angle that names it.

• — Forehead, cheekbones and jaw fall within a narrow range of one another.
• — Length and width are close, so the outline reads as a rectangle with corners.
• — The jaw turns. Run a finger from below your ear towards your chin and it changes direction at a definite point rather than curving through it.
• — The chin is flat or broad rather than pointed.
• — The hairline often runs fairly straight across rather than curving.

Square and round share their proportions and differ only at that corner. Square and oblong share the corner and differ on length: oblong runs noticeably longer than it is wide, where square does not. If a face has the corner and the length, the shape charts usually call it rectangular and every note on this page still applies.

Measure it rather than guess

How sharp a corner counts as a corner is a genuinely hard call in a mirror, and it is the whole difference between two shapes. The face shape detector measures the jaw angle along with the three widths and the length, from one photograph, in your browser. It is free, and the photograph never leaves the page.

Where to put colour

One principle covers most of it: curves soften a square face and straight lines repeat it. Blush goes on the apple of the cheek and is blended in a rounded motion up and inwards, kept inside a vertical line dropped from the outer corner of the eye. Taking colour out towards the corner of the jaw draws attention to the widest point and to the angle at the same time.

Contour, if you want the jaw quieter, belongs at the two corners themselves and along the temples, applied in a small curved stroke that follows around the corner rather than a straight bar drawn along the jawbone. A straight line of shadow beside a straight line of bone produces two straight lines. Highlight the centre of the forehead, the top of the cheekbone and the middle of the chin, which pulls the eye towards the centre of the face and away from the outer edges.

Brows are where this goes wrong most often. A hard angular brow with a sharp peak doubles the angle of the jaw, and the face reads severe without anyone being able to say why. A soft rounded arch, or a gentle peak with the corner blurred, is the better default. Lips can afford to be full and slightly rounded, with the edge blended rather than drawn hard.

Hair

A blunt cut ending exactly at the jaw lies along the corner and traces it, which is the one thing to be deliberate about. Ending an inch or two below the jaw, or well above it, leaves the line alone. Soft layers beginning around the cheekbone, waves rather than straight lengths, and a side parting that breaks a straight hairline all work with the shape. A heavy blunt fringe adds a second horizontal line to a face that already has one at the jaw; a softer fringe swept to one side does not.

Glasses

Round and oval frames are the obvious answer and they are the right one, because they introduce the curve the face does not have. Thin metal and rimless frames do the same thing by adding less line overall. A frame that lifts at the outer corner draws the eye upwards, away from the jaw. Heavy rectangular frames with a strong flat top bar echo the jaw exactly, which some people want and most do not, and a frame wider than the jaw itself tends to make the lower face look wider still.

What is a myth

That a square jaw is a problem to be contoured away. This is the shape that photographs best of the six, because a jaw with a corner holds a shadow and reads as structure under almost any light. The whole of the advice on this page is about volume, not repair: soft if you want soft, left alone if you do not.

The second myth is the blanket rule that square faces must never wear a bob or a fringe. Where a cut ends matters; the name of the cut does not. A bob that finishes below the jaw is a different thing from one that finishes on it, and the rule as usually stated cannot tell them apart.