Nose shape test: what nose shape do I have?

What nose shape do I have? The eleven shapes

Each shape has its own guide, with how to tell it apart from its neighbors, contouring, and the glasses that sit well on it. See all nose shapes side by side, front and profile.

Straight noseThe bridge runs in a straight line from a soft dip between the brows to a tip that points forward, with no bump and no scoop.Greek noseA straight bridge that carries on from the forehead with almost no dip between the brows, so brow and nose read as one line.Roman noseA long, strong nose whose bridge rises to a bump partway down, then runs on to a tip that points forward or dips slightly.Aquiline noseThe bridge curves outward in one smooth arc, like an eagle's beak, often ending in a tip that points slightly down.Snub noseA short nose with a tip that turns up, so the nostrils show from the side and the underside angles toward the forehead.Button noseA small, short nose with a softly rounded tip and a low, gently curved bridge; the tip points forward with only a slight lift.Bulbous noseThe tip is round and full, clearly wider than the bridge above it, like the bulb at the base of a flower.Wide noseThe base of the nose, measured across the nostril wings, is wide for the face: usually wider than the space between the eyes.Flat noseA low bridge that rises only a little from the face in profile, usually with a broad base and a soft, rounded tip.Nubian noseA long bridge with a wide base and full, rounded nostrils, usually with a tip that points forward.Crooked noseThe bridge or tip bends away from the center line of the face, in a C, an S, or a straight slant to one side.

How the nose shape test works

A face model running in your browser places 478 points on your face, including the edges of your nostril wings, the sides of your tip and bridge, the corners of your eyes, and the edge of each iris. We level the photo on the line down the middle of your face, so a tilted head doesn’t skew the numbers, then measure three things:

• Width: the distance across your nostril wings, divided by the gap between your inner eye corners. Old drawing canons set the two equal, and in Leslie Farkas’s measurements of young adults they matched in about 40% of people (Farkas et al., 1985). In his North American reference adults the nose averaged 34.9 mm across and the eye gap 33.3 mm in men, a ratio of 1.05, and 31.4 and 31.8 mm in women, 0.99; in African American adults the nose averaged 44.1 mm in men and 40.1 mm in women, against eye gaps of 35.8 and 34.4 mm, ratios of 1.23 and 1.17 (tables in Virdi, Wertheim, and Naini, 2019). We read under 0.90 as narrower than the eye gap and over 1.15 as wide. Those two lines are ours, set about 0.1 either side of the reference averages.
• Length: from the top of your nose, between your eyes, to its base, as a share of the distance from the top of your nose to your chin. The same tables work out to about 43% in reference men and 44% in women, and about 40% in African American men and 41% in women. Under 41% reads short for your face, a button trait, and over 47% reads long. These lines are ours too.
• Tip: the width across your tip, where it meets the nostril wings, divided by the width of your bridge halfway down. No published study uses these points, so this band is the tool’s own: on our straight-on test photos the face model’s readings ran from 1.88 to 2.11, and we read under 1.92 as a narrow, defined tip and over 2.05 as a tip wider than the bridge, the bulbous pattern.

Your answers name the profile: a bridge that curves out reads Roman, or aquiline when the tip also points down; a scooped bridge or a tip that turns up reads snub; a low bridge reads flat; and a straight bridge reads Greek when it runs on from the forehead, and straight when there is a dip between the brows. A wide base reads Nubian when the bridge is also long or the wings flare, and a bridge that leans reads crooked. Millimeters come from your iris: the visible iris averages about 11.7 mm across in adults (Rüfer et al., 2005).

What a front photo can and can’t tell

A straight-on photo is good at widths and lengths, so those come from your photo. It can’t see your profile: whether the bridge curves out, runs straight, or scoops in, and which way the tip points, only show from the side. The face model also places its points on your nostril wings from the whole face, so it follows how wide they sit but not how far they curve out, and a slight lean of the bridge is easy to confuse with a turned head. You can see all of these in a mirror in a few seconds, so the test asks, and marks which parts of your result came from your answers.

How to take a photo for the nose shape test

1. Hold the camera at arm’s length or further, at eye height, and look straight into the lens. A close selfie makes the nose look wider than it is.
2. Keep your chin level. Tipping it up shortens your nose and shows your nostrils; tipping it down makes your nose read longer.
3. Face soft daylight, so the edges of your nose are clear, and relax your face with your mouth closed.
4. Take off glasses, which sit on your bridge and hide it.

For the profile checks, stand side-on to a mirror and hold a second mirror, or your phone’s camera, at nose height in front of you. Look at the line from your brow down to your tip, and at the angle between the underside of your nose and your upper lip. In Farkas’s reference adults that angle averaged about 100 degrees in men and 104 in women, a tip that points ahead or a little up, and about 71 and 74 degrees in African American adults, a tip that points a little down (Virdi, Wertheim, and Naini, 2019).

Your nose is one part of your face’s balance. The face shape detector measures its outline, and the face proportions calculator sets your nose against your thirds and fifths. No nose shape is better than another; the guides are about what suits yours.