Choosing Sunglasses for Your Face Shape
How to Choose Sunglasses for Face Shape –
As with all apparel and accessories, when shopping for sunglasses, it’s important to consider your shape to find the most flattering look. Though all of our faces are unique, we categorize faces into six basic shapes – diamond, heart, oval, rectangle, round, and square. By determining which shape your face is closest to, you can follow some basic styling rules for that shape to help you in your search for the best sunglasses shape for you.
What Is My Face Shape?
This is a fairly easy question to answer. There are three simple steps to follow, but first, let’s take a look at the key features of each face shape
- Square faces are as long as they are wide, with a broad forehead and wide, angular jawline
- Round faces are also about equally long and wide with a wide hairline and have less pronounced cheekbones and a soft rounded jawline compared to a square face
- Oval faces are longer than they are wide. The forehead is often the widest part of this face shape and it may feature high and wide cheekbones and a rounded chin.
- Heart-shaped faces may have a pointed hairline, and feature wide cheekbones and a narrow, delicate chin
- Diamond faces are similar to the heart-shaped face but for a narrow forehead that completes the diamond shape
- Triangle faces start with a narrow forehead and widen all the way down to the chin and jawline
To determine which face shape is closest to your face, all you need is a mirror (and a tape measure for you overachievers).
Step 1 – Compare the width and length of your face. You can measure top of your forehead to the tip of your chin and side to side from the widest points for an exact ratio. Or you can eyeball it, using your handing to bisect your face vertically and horizontally. If your face is longer than wide, it could be an oval, heart, diamond, or triangle. If the dimensions are roughly equal, you may have a square or round face.
Step 2 – Determine the widest part of your face. Is it your forehead, cheeks, or jawline that is widest? You can pick up that tape measure again if the answer isn’t obvious. A wide forehead points to an oval shape, wide cheekbones are trademarks of heart and diamond shapes, wide jawlines often belong to triangle faces. If your forehead, cheeks, and jawline are all a similar width, you may have a square face.
Step 3 – If you still are unsure, zero in on your jawline. Soft, rounded indicates a round face, narrow and pointy a heart or triangle, and wide and angular a square or rectangle.
You may have noticed that there is some crossover in the features of each face shape. Many people find they fall between two shapes. In this case, take a close look at the style recommendations below for both face shapes and utilize our virtual try-on feature to find your perfect sunglasses shapes.
Choosing the Right Sunglasses for Your Face Shape
When choosing the best sunglasses for face shape, we look at the shape of the sunglasses to either accentuate or balance out your face shape and features. We’ll get into recommendations of types of sunglasses for face shapes below, but always remember that these guidelines are meant to be broken depending on your personal style and preferences.
Sunglasses for Square Shaped Faces
Looking for sunglasses with soft curves is a great compliment to the straight lines and crisp angles of square faces. We especially love round sunglasses on a square face. The curves of a classic aviator like the General also add dimension.
Stay away from square and rectangular shapes that can look blocky on a square shape.
Sunglasses for Round Faces
The same strategy works for round faces – choose an opposite frame shape to balance out your features. Straight lines, sharp corners, and bold frames add angles and dimension to round faces. Rectangular sunglasses are a perfect choice, also check out square and browline styles.
Stay away from round sunglasses and small sunglasses as they can get lost on a round face and make your face look wider.
Sunglasses for Heart Shaped Faces
Choosing sunglasses for heart-shaped faces is about balancing the wider top half and narrower bottom half of your face. Stay away from styles that taper off at the bottom of the lens. Sunglasses with a heavy browline or brow embellishment can also over-accentuate your wider forehead.
Aside from that, there are few restrictions as many sunglass shapes will flatter you. Round sunglasses work well with a heart-shaped face, as do aviator sunglasses that add some width to the middle of the face.
Sunglasses for Triangle Shaped Faces
With a triangle face, you want to add width to the eye area to balance out a strong jawline. Try out browline sunglasses that draw the eye up and out or a cateye style. Rectangular shaped sunglasses work great as well, just avoid narrow frames that can make your jaw look wider and less balanced.
Sunglasses for Oval Shaped Faces
Oval faces can pull off just about any look since this face shape is naturally balanced. One useful tip is to make sure you don’t choose a style that is narrower than the widest point of your face which can enlarge your face. Use our virtual try-on feature on each product page to check the width suits your face.
Sunglasses for Diamond Shaped Faces
For diamond faces, use sunglasses to broaden your narrow forehead and chin. Wider styles like rectangular sunglasses or upswept styles like cat-eye sunglasses will enhance your cheekbones and harmonize your features. Round sunglasses can also be lovely on diamond faces, the soft lines contrasting the lovely angles of your face.
Pass on narrow frames that can make your cheeks look wider.
What Else to Consider When Choosing a Sunglasses Shape
Now you have a good idea of what sunglasses will work best with your face shape, but wait, there’s more. These guidelines on sunglasses by face shape are not the only consideration when shopping for shades.
Skin Tone
You may have zeroed in on which sunglasses are best for your face shape, but which color should you choose? You want the color you choose to compliment your skin tone – whether it’s warm or cool
- For warm skin tones (with yellow or golden undertones), colors with a yellow base will best flatter you. Look for gold, tortoise, brown, and red shades.
- For cool skin tones (with pink or blue undertones), colors like silver, blue, gunmetal, black, and rose gold will pop.
Face size
Choosing the correct size for your face is critical so that your sunglasses will look good and won’t limit your field of vision. Many American Optical sunglasses are offered in multiple sizes to fit a wide variety of faces.
We recommend using our virtual try-on feature to find the size that fits you best. Whether you have a small face or a wide face, you want your sunglasses to be slightly wider than your face so as not to distort your vision or your look.
Your Lifestyle and Personality
Your lifestyle and personality are always more important than any trend. American Optical sunglasses are built to last, so choose a style that fits in with your lifestyle – you’ll be able to wear it for years.
Consider how you’ll be wearing your glasses. Will you wear them all day or less often? For longer wear, consider more lightweight, adjustable frames, like our metal styles with lightweight AOLite lenses.
What types of activities will you perform in your sunglasses? If you’re into snow and water sports, you’ll want polarized lenses to minimize glare, whereas a pilot may need non-polarized lenses.
Conclusion
We hope you can confidently choose an American Optical style you know will flatter you now that you’ve identified your face shape, skin tone, face size, and lifestyle considerations.
That said, we’re always happy to help you choose a style or styles. Please contact us if you’re looking for recommendations or have any questions!
