Face shape · one of 7

Triangle

Triangle is the face that gets wider on the way down: the jaw is the widest measurement, the forehead the narrowest, and the outline opens outward from temple to jaw. Also called Pear. It is the exact opposite of the shape called Inverted Triangle, which this site publishes as Heart.

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Also called Pear / Base-Down Triangle. Same shape, different name — this page covers both.

How to check whether this is you

Four numbers, straight on, hair pushed 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 mid-face, level with the outer corner of the eye. Jaw at the angle — find the corner below and just forward of each earlobe with your fingers, then measure between those two points. Length, hairline to the bottom of the chin. Triangle is settled on one comparison: divide the jaw width by the forehead width. On this shape the answer is about 1.15 or more, meaning the jaw beats the forehead by fifteen percent or better, and the jaw is also equal to or wider than the cheekbones, so the widest part of your face is the bottom. Length over cheekbone width lands in the middle of the range, roughly 1.25 to 1.40; length is not what defines this shape. The jaw usually turns a defined corner and the chin tends to be broad rather than pointed. Two mis-measurements matter here. First, measure the jaw at the bone, not at the soft tissue: put your fingers on the angle and press before you bring the tape near it, since fullness under the jaw and at the neck will report a wider number than the bone gives. Second, and this catches more people than anything else on the site, the name. Triangle here means base-down, the wide end at the jaw. What many sources call Inverted Triangle — wide forehead, narrow pointed chin — is published on this site as Heart. If your forehead is the wider end, you are on the wrong page.

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.

ProportionSlightly: longer than wide · +1wider than longlonger than wide
JawlineSlightly: angular · +1curvedangular
Top-to-bottom balanceStrongly: jaw wider · +3forehead widerjaw wider
CheekbonesSlightly: flat · -1flatwidest point

Why someone gets read as Triangle

Grouped by the axis each observation moves.

Proportion

Slightly: longer than wide · +1

Length over cheekbone width sits in the middle of the range, about 1.25 to 1.40. The face is slightly longer than wide, but length is not what anyone notices about it.
In a straight-on photo the face reads as neither short nor elongated. The proportion that draws the eye runs side to side at the bottom, not top to bottom.

Jawline

Slightly: angular · +1

Tracing from the chin back toward the ear finds a defined corner. There is plenty of jaw width for the bone to turn on, and the turn is usually easy to feel and often visible.
The chin is flat and broad rather than pointed, so the face finishes on a wide horizontal edge that matches the width of the jaw behind it.

Top-to-bottom balance

Strongly: jaw wider · +3

Jaw width divided by forehead width comes out at about 1.15 or more. Measured side by side, the jaw is obviously the larger of the two rather than a close call.
The face tapers inward toward the temples, not toward the chin. Drawn as an outline it is a wedge standing on its base.

Cheekbones

Slightly: flat · -1

The cheekbones measure about the same as the jaw or a little under it, so they are not the widest point of the face. Whatever width the mid-face has, the jaw matches or beats it.
Cheekbones are only moderately visible in a straight-on photo. The structure that reads is the jaw, and the mid-face sits quieter by comparison.

What suits it

Haircuts and partings: Build width above the ears and keep it off the jaw. Volume at the crown and at the temple, a side-swept or soft full fringe with texture, a deep side part, and half-up styles with height all add mass to the narrow upper face. Layers should start around the cheekbone and either finish above the jaw or continue well past it to the collarbone — the length that must not happen is a blunt one-length bob ending exactly at the jaw angle, which lays a horizontal line across the widest part of the face and is the single most common wrong cut for this shape. Waves through the mid-lengths, kept softer at the bottom than at the top, work well. What to avoid alongside the jaw-length bob: all the volume concentrated at the ends, a tight low bun with flat sides, and heavy one-length hair with no movement at the top. If you wear it up, leave pieces at the temple and take the height up rather than back.
Glasses and sunglasses: Top-heavy frames, worn wide. Browline and clubmaster styles, cat-eyes with a genuinely upswept outer corner, aviators with a strong top bar, and any frame with a thicker, darker or decorated upper rim all put weight on the narrow part of the face. Frame width should exceed the widest part of your upper face so the temples read broader; unusually for this site, a frame that looks a size large is often correct here. Set the frames reasonably high on the bridge. What to avoid is the mirror image of all that: bottom-heavy frames with weight along the lower rim, small narrow ovals that shrink the upper face further, and rimless designs, which give the brow line no help at all. For sunglasses, a squared aviator with a solid brow bar is the reliable pick.
Necklines and collars: Draw the eye up and narrow the line at the jaw. A V-neck, a scoop, an open shirt collar with two buttons undone, a halter, and anything with interest at the shoulder or collarbone all move attention above the jaw. Structured or detailed shoulders help; a wide boat neck is more of a judgment call, since it adds width high but also lands close under the jaw, so it works better when the shoulders are narrow than when they are broad. What to avoid is a tight crew neck and a heavy chunky cowl, both of which put bulk directly beside the widest part of the face. For necklaces, take an 18 to 24 inch chain so the piece sits below the jaw rather than at it, and skip the choker.
Earrings: Narrower at the bottom than at the top. Inverted teardrops, triangle shapes pointing up, small to medium hoops, and studs all keep the visual weight above the jaw angle. Length is better kept at or above the jawline; a drop that finishes level with the widest point of the jaw puts a marker on it. What to avoid is the wide chandelier that fans out low, and the broad flat disc that hangs beside the jaw corner. If you want a statement, take it upward — an ear climber or a cuff running up the ear adds height on the side of the head, which is exactly the direction this shape benefits from.
Brow shape: Go bolder than average. A fuller brow with a defined arch adds visual weight to the upper third of the face and is the cheapest counterbalance to a strong jaw there is; this is the shape where under-groomed, over-tweezed brows cost the most. Set the peak around two-thirds of the way out, let the tail run its full length to the point where a line from the outer nostril past the outer corner of the eye would cross, and keep a definite angle rather than a flat line. Thin, short, faint brows are the shape to avoid here, and a soft powder or pencil filling out the front third does more for the balance of this face than most makeup steps.
Contour, blush and highlight: Take width off the jaw and add light at the top. Lay a matte shade one to two tones deeper than your skin on the jaw angle, starting below the earlobe and sweeping forward along the bone, stopping short of the chin, then blend downward under the jaw so there is no visible edge; a light touch in the hollow under the cheekbone is optional. Highlight at the temples and across the upper forehead and the tops of the cheekbones, which widens the narrow end. Blush goes on the cheekbone and sweeps up and out toward the temple rather than sitting low and horizontal on the apple, since anything placed low and wide reinforces the direction the face already runs. Keep lip color moderate rather than very dark, since a heavy lip anchors attention at the bottom of the face.

Easy to confuse with

Triangle vs Square

Both have a defined jaw corner and a broad chin, so the forehead is the question. On a Square the forehead and the jaw agree within about five percent; on a Triangle the jaw beats the forehead by fifteen percent or more and the outline visibly widens on the way down. Measure the forehead at its widest rather than at the hairline notch, or a Square will read as a Triangle.

Read the Square page →

Triangle vs Oval

An Oval has the cheekbones as its widest measurement, a soft jaw corner and a gentle taper toward the chin; a Triangle has the jaw as its widest measurement, a defined corner and a taper running the other way, toward the temples. If you are unsure, put a ruler across your forehead and then across your jaw and compare the two numbers — that single comparison separates these two more reliably than anything visual.

Read the Oval page →

Triangle vs Oblong

Both can look bottom-heavy in a photograph. The split is the balance measurement rather than the length: Oblong keeps its three widths within about seven percent of each other with near parallel sides, while Triangle runs a jaw at least fifteen percent wider than its forehead. Oblong also measures about 1.45 and up on length over cheekbone width, where Triangle sits in the middle of the range.

Read the Oblong page →

Triangle vs Diamond

Both have a narrow forehead, which is why they get mixed up, but the widest point is in a different place. On a Diamond the cheekbones beat both the forehead and the jaw by ten percent or more and the face pinches in again at the chin; on a Triangle the jaw is the widest point and the face stays wide all the way down. Check which is wider, your cheekbones or your jaw angles.

Read the Diamond page →

Triangle 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.

Triangle and Inverted Triangle are opposite categories, not synonyms, and the naming clash is a real one that different published sources handle differently.Read on 2026-08-31. Optometrists.org, published by Optometrists Network, names five shapes in its frame guide — square, round, heart, triangular and oval — treating "heart" and "triangular" as two separate categories, and recommends for the triangular face a "bold-top frame that elongates your forehead". 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, separates its images into five directories and carries no triangle class at all. The "Pear" alias is reported here as common convention; we could not verify it in a primary source.
The eyewear advice here — put the weight at the top of the frame — is the optical trade's own contrast convention, which the profession states as guidance rather than as a rule.Optometrists.org, guide to optical frames, read on 2026-08-31. For a triangular face it recommends a "bold-top frame that elongates your forehead", listing "cat-eye, aviator, and D-frames", and it states plainly that "these tips are meant to be helpful, they are not hard and fast rules". We found no controlled trial of frame-shape matching against face shape and do not claim one exists; the same caveat applies to the hair, neckline, earring, brow and makeup advice on this page, which is reasoning from the measurements rather than tested effect.
The mid-range length ratio quoted here, about 1.25 to 1.40, 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, with euryprosopic at 80 to 84.9, mesoprosopic at 85 to 89.5 and leptoprosopic at 90 to 94.5. 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 on this page is our own arithmetic, multiplying by 1.5 on the classical three-part division of the face. The bands are theirs, the conversion is ours, and the jaw-over-forehead threshold of 1.15 has no published band behind it at all, because the classical facial index uses neither jaw width nor forehead width.
Width measurements vary more between populations than height measurements do, so the forehead-versus-jaw threshold on this page is an approximation rather than a constant.Farkas LG, Katic MJ, Forrest CR, "International anthropometric study of facial morphology in various ethnic groups/races", Journal of Craniofacial Surgery 2005;16(4):615-646, doi:10.1097/01.scs.0000171847.58031.9e, PMID 16077306. Abstract read in full on 2026-08-31 via the PubMed record. The study measured 1,470 healthy subjects aged 18 to 30 from European, Middle Eastern, Asian and African-origin groups against North American white norms and reports that "vertical measurements revealed a higher frequency of identical values than horizontal ones" — the horizontal measurements being exactly the ones this page compares.
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.