Face shape · one of 7

Diamond

Diamond is the shape where the cheekbones win outright: wider than the forehead and wider than the jaw, by a margin you can see across a room, on a face that is clearly longer than it is wide. It is bone, not fullness — the width is a ridge you can feel, and it narrows at both ends.

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How to check whether this is you

Take the four numbers straight on, hair back, camera at eye level. Forehead at its widest, temple to temple, roughly halfway between the brow and the hairline. Cheekbones at the widest point of the face, level with the outer corner of the eye. Jaw at the angle, between the corners you can feel below and just forward of each earlobe. Length, hairline to the bottom of the chin. Diamond needs two conditions at once, and most people who arrive here only have one. First, the cheekbones must beat both other widths by a clear margin: cheekbone over forehead of about 1.10 or more, and cheekbone over jaw of about 1.10 or more. Second, the forehead and jaw must be roughly comparable to each other, within about a tenth, so the face narrows at both ends rather than at one. Length over cheekbone width runs at the long end of the middle range, about 1.35 to 1.45. The first mis-measurement is confusing fullness with bone. Press below the outer corner of your eye and move back toward the top of your ear; on a Diamond you will feel a ridge that stands proud of the surface around it, and it will cast a visible shadow in flat daylight. Soft cheeks measure wide too and belong to Round. The second is the forehead. If your forehead measures within a few percent of your cheekbones, the top of your face is wide and you are on the Heart page, not this one. Measure the forehead at its widest, not at the narrow notch where the hairline corners cut in, or you will manufacture a Diamond that is not there.

Where it sits on the four axes

Face shape here is four measurements, not a vibe: proportion, jawline, top-to-bottom balance, and where the face is widest. Those are the four scores the questionnaire produces, so a verdict can always be traced back to the measurement that drove it.

ProportionClearly: longer than wide · +2wider than longlonger than wide
JawlineSlightly: curved · -1curvedangular
Top-to-bottom balanceBalanced — neither pole dominates · 0forehead widerjaw wider
CheekbonesStrongly: widest point · +3flatwidest point

Why someone gets read as Diamond

Grouped by the axis each observation moves.

Proportion

Clearly: longer than wide · +2

Length over cheekbone width comes out around 1.35 to 1.45 — clearly longer than wide, though not so long that the length is what people notice first.
In a straight-on photo the face reads as slightly long. Cropped tight, the frame is noticeably taller than it is wide, but nothing like a rectangle.

Jawline

Slightly: curved · -1

Tracing from the chin back toward the ear gives a soft curve rather than a corner. There is little jaw width for a corner to sit on, so the line runs almost straight up to the ear.
The chin is narrow, often coming to a point or close to it, so the face closes to a small finish rather than a broad one.

Top-to-bottom balance

Balanced — neither pole dominates · 0

Forehead and jaw measure within about a tenth of each other. Both are narrow, and neither is the wide end — which is exactly what separates this shape from Heart and from Triangle.
The face does not taper in a single direction. It narrows both upward toward the temples and downward toward the chin, from a middle that is wider than either.

Cheekbones

Strongly: widest point · +3

The cheekbones are by far the widest part of the face, beating the forehead and the jaw by ten percent or more each. The outline visibly bulges out at eye level and comes back in on both sides.
Cheekbones are the most prominent feature in a straight-on photo, throwing a shadow underneath them in ordinary indoor light rather than only under studio lighting.

What suits it

Haircuts and partings: Give the forehead and the jaw something and keep the cheekbone line clear. A fringe is the highest-value change on this shape: a curtain fringe parting at the center, a soft full fringe, or a side-swept sweep all put hair across a narrow forehead and make the top of the face read wider. Below, keep length past the jaw with volume through the ends — a chin-length bob that flares out slightly at the bottom, a lob with a bend at the collarbone, or waves that start below the cheekbone all add width where the face has none. What works against you is anything that exposes the narrow forehead and piles bulk at the widest point: hair slicked straight back into a high tight bun, a severe center part with flat sides, and layers that stop level with the cheekbone, which stack width onto the one place that already has it. Tucking hair behind both ears has the same effect. If you wear it up, pull a few pieces down at the temple.
Glasses and sunglasses: Frames with weight along the top and enough width to contain the cheekbone. Browline and clubmaster styles, cat-eyes, ovals, and rimless-below designs all put detail at the brow, which is the narrow part of the face here. Oval and softly rounded shapes suit the face better than hard rectangles, since the cheekbone is already providing the angle. The critical fitting measurement is width: the frame should be at least as wide as your cheekbones, so the widest part of your face sits inside the outline rather than pushing out past it. A narrow frame is the common error and it exaggerates the cheek. Also watch the vertical placement — a frame whose widest point sits exactly on the cheekbone highlights it, so a shallower lens or a frame that sits a little higher is the better pick. Rimless frames give the least help of any style here.
Necklines and collars: Width at the collarbone and shoulder. A crew neck, a high round neck, a boat neck, a turtleneck, a cowl and a spread collar all lay a horizontal across the top of the chest and answer the double taper of the face. A deep narrow V is the neckline to avoid, since it repeats the same inward point that the chin already makes. For necklaces, take a collar or a statement piece on a 16 to 18 inch chain, sitting flat at the base of the neck, rather than a long pendant on a 28 to 30 inch chain, which extends the vertical. A scarf tied with volume at the front of the neck does the same job as a collar necklace and is often easier to wear.
Earrings: Visual weight low and reasonably close to the face. Studs, small to medium hoops, and drops that widen toward the bottom all add mass near the narrow jaw. What to avoid is the long narrow drop whose end lands level with the cheekbone, which puts a pointer on the widest part of the face, and the wide flat disc worn flush at the earlobe, which sits at the same height and extends the width outward. If you want length, take it past the jaw rather than stopping mid-cheek. Chandelier styles work when they fan out low and stay narrow at the top.
Brow shape: Go slightly fuller and slightly longer than you think. A narrow forehead reads wider when the brows carry more weight and extend a little further toward the temple, so resist tapering the tails to a thin point and let them end at, rather than short of, the line running from the outer nostril past the outer corner of the eye. A soft arch with the peak around two-thirds out suits the face; a very high pointed arch pulls the eye upward into the narrowest part and makes the forehead look narrower still. Over-tweezed short brows are the most common problem to correct on this shape, and growing them back does more than any product.
Contour, blush and highlight: Reverse the usual instinct. Highlight the center of the forehead and the center of the chin, which are the two narrow ends, and be sparing with highlighter on the cheekbones — the place most tutorials tell you to put it — because the bone is already the widest and brightest thing on the face. If you contour, place it directly on the outermost point of the cheekbone and in the hollow of the temple above it, blending downward and back toward the ear rather than forward toward the mouth. Blush belongs lower and further forward than the standard placement: on the apple of the cheek, nearer the nose, rather than swept up along the bone toward the temple. A fuller lip and a slightly wider lip line add weight to the lower third of the face.

Easy to confuse with

Diamond vs Heart

Both narrow to a point at the chin and both have visible cheekbones, so the forehead is the whole question. A Heart forehead is wide, within a few percent of the cheekbones and clearly wider than the jaw; a Diamond forehead is narrow, at least ten percent under the cheekbones and about level with the jaw. Measure your temples at their widest before deciding, since measuring at the hairline notch will fake a Diamond.

Read the Heart page →

Diamond vs Oval

Both have cheekbones as the widest measurement and a soft jaw. The difference is the size of the win. On an Oval the cheekbones beat the forehead by a margin you have to measure to notice, maybe two to ten percent; on a Diamond they beat both other widths by ten percent or more and the outline visibly bulges. Diamond also runs a little longer, around 1.35 to 1.45 against 1.30 to 1.42.

Read the Oval page →

Diamond vs Round

Both are widest at the cheek, and this site separates them deliberately: Round is widest there because of flesh, Diamond because of bone. Press below the outer corner of your eye — a ridge standing proud of the surrounding surface is Diamond, an even fullness is Round. The ratio also splits them cleanly, since Round measures about 1.20 or below on length over cheekbone width and Diamond about 1.35 or above.

Read the Round page →

Diamond vs Oblong

Both are long, so the split is what happens across the middle. On an Oblong the three widths agree within a few percent and the sides run close to parallel; on a Diamond the cheekbones beat both other widths by ten percent or more and the outline pinches in above and below them. If your face is long but does not bulge anywhere, Oblong is the page.

Read the Oblong page →

Diamond is one of four readings

Face shape decides frames and haircuts. The dossier reads it against your color season, your body line and your skin undertone — which is what decides an outfit — and shows the evidence table behind all four.

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Sources

— 5 claims, each with where it comes from

Every claim on this page that is not our own measurement is listed here with where it comes from. Anything we could not source, we left out.

The long end of the ratio ladder used here, about 1.35 to 1.45, is converted from published anthropometric bands rather than from styling convention.Shrestha R, Shrestha N, Upadhyay HP, "Prevalence of Leptoprosopic Type of Face among Dental Students: A Cross-Sectional study", JNMA Journal of the Nepal Medical Association 2019; 57(218):216-220, doi:10.31729/jnma.4416. Read in full on 2026-08-31. It defines the facial index as nasion-to-gnathion height over bizygomatic width, times 100, and gives leptoprosopic as 90 to 94.5 and hyperleptoprosopic as 95 to 99.5. The anthropometric height starts at the nasion, at the bridge of the nose, not the hairline; converting those bands to the hairline-to-chin measurement used here is our own arithmetic, multiplying by 1.5 on the classical three-part division of the face. The bands are theirs and the conversion is ours.
The cheekbone landmark this page tells you to feel for is a defined anthropometric point, not a styling invention.Landmark definitions read on 2026-08-31 in Shrestha et al., cited above, which defines zygion as "the lateral most point on the zygomatic arch" and uses the distance between the left and right zygion as facial width. That is the same ridge this page asks you to press for below the outer corner of the eye. The ten-percent thresholds comparing cheekbone width against forehead and jaw width have no equivalent published band, because the classical facial index does not use forehead or jaw width at all; those figures are this site's own operating rule.
Diamond is one of the categories that disappears when a source uses a shorter list, which is why other tools may put you somewhere else.Read on 2026-08-31. Optometrists.org, published by Optometrists Network, names five shapes in its frame guide — square, round, heart, triangular and oval — and does not treat diamond as a separate category at all. The labelled dataset at github.com/dsmlr/faceshape, published with Pasupa K, Sunhem W, Loo CK, "A Hybrid Approach to Building Face Shape Classifier for Hairstyle Recommender System", Expert Systems With Applications, doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2018.11.011, likewise separates its images into five directories with no diamond class, and the abstract quoted in that repository reports 70.33 percent accuracy for its fusion model.
Seven face shapes, including this one, is the count taught in the standard United States cosmetology curriculum.Milady Standard Cosmetology, 14th Edition, 13th-14th Edition Transition Guide (Milady, a part of Cengage Learning, copyright 2023; document 79011_TransitionGuide_rev01, dated 24 March 2022), read in full on 2026-08-31. Chapter 9, Principles of Hair Design, learning objective 7 reads "Identify the seven different facial shapes and design a beneficial hairstyle for each", and the guide lists a new "Table 9-4, Determining Face Shapes". It does not enumerate the seven names, so we do not claim our seven are word-for-word Milady's.
Diamond is the least frequently returned of the seven shapes by this site's own engine, which is worth knowing before you conclude that you are one.Measured on 2026-08-31 against src/lib/diagnostics/faceshape.ts in this repository. Method, so it is repeatable: the module was bundled and every one of the 390,625 possible answer sets to the eight-question face shape questionnaire was scored and ranked. All seven shapes are reachable. Diamond wins 9.0 percent of answer sets, the lowest of the seven, against square at 23.3 percent and oval at 22.9 percent. That is a property of the questionnaire and the coordinate table, not a measurement of how common the shape is in the population, and we make no claim about the latter.