Face Form Finder

Hairline Shapes: The Four Types, Three Heights, and the Twelve Combinations

A hairline carries two readings, not one. The first is the shape of the line across the forehead. The second is how high that line sits. Four shapes and three height bands make twelve combinations, and the table below gives the measured share of each combination, taken from 461 men with no hair loss.

A dash means the two readings are not split apart for that combination. It is not a zero, and it is not a value filled in with a guess.

Two things fall out of the table straight away. Every combination the table gives for the high band is one of the three rarest in the whole set. Both combinations it gives for the middle band are the two most common. The line you have and the height it sits at are not independent facts about you, and this is the only chart in this set that puts the two together.

How the four shapes are told apart

The shape reading is about where the line bends, not about how far back it has moved. Four patterns cover it.

M-shaped. Two dips, one over each temple, with the centre of the line still sitting low between them. The dips are the shape; the centre is what makes it read as an M rather than as a line that has moved.

Rectangular. A flat run across the forehead with a corner at each end. There is no dip and no centre point.

Round. One even curve from temple to temple, with no corner at either end and no dip in the middle.

Wave-shaped. The line rises and falls more than once on its way across. It is the one shape in this set that most hairline lists leave out altogether.

Three checks settle which of the four you are looking at: how many dips the line has (two, none, none, or several), whether the two ends turn a corner or keep curving, and whether the centre drops below the rest of the line.

How the three heights are set

Height on this chart is not a measurement in centimetres. It is a ratio taken from the proportions of the forehead itself, so the band a line lands in depends on the rest of the face as much as on the line.

Two consequences follow. A man with a forehead of average height in centimetres can sit in the high band if the lower half of his face is short. And two men who both describe themselves as having a high hairline can land in different bands without either of them being wrong.

That is also why the height reading is worth taking separately instead of folding it into the shape. A figure in centimetres tells you how large a forehead is. The band tells you how the line sits against the face around it, which is the thing that actually shows in a photograph.

Why the second reading changes the answer

Two men can share one shape label and look nothing alike, because the height moves the whole picture.

Take the M. On a low line the two dips sit close to the outer corners of the brow, and the centre between them is barely above them. The eye reads a line with two soft notches. On a high line the same two dips sit well up the forehead and the centre between them stands clear of the brow by a visible margin. Same shape, same two dips, and the face reads completely differently.

The same holds for the flat shapes. A rectangular line sitting low leaves a narrow band of skin between line and brow, and the corners disappear at normal viewing distance. The identical rectangle higher up reads as a hard horizontal edge with two sharp ends.

So when a list tells you your hairline is M-shaped and stops there, it has given you half of a two-part description. The other half is what decides whether the shape is the first thing anyone notices or something you have to look for.

The six combinations that are not broken out

Half of the twelve cells in the table are empty. Six of the twelve combinations are separated and the other six are not.

That is worth knowing before you go looking for your own cell. A chart that shows twelve boxes and fills six is not withholding the rest; it shows you exactly where the table stops. Round at the middle height, wave-shaped at the middle, rectangular at the high band, rectangular at the low band, M-shaped at the high band and wave-shaped at the low band are the six that are given no share of their own.

If your line falls in one of those six, the table still works. Read your shape off the four patterns above and your height off the three bands, and you have your combination. You simply have no population figure to put beside it. Nothing in the other half of the table can be borrowed to fill that gap, because a shape's total is not a combination's share.

The two shapes most lists add that this system leaves out

Five names cover most hairline lists: round, M-shaped, rectangular, bell-shaped and triangular. The four-type system behind the table above keeps three of them and adds wave-shaped. Bell-shaped and triangular are not part of it.

That matters when you compare one chart with another. A list offering bell-shaped and triangular beside M-shaped and rectangular is running two different systems side by side, and the names do not line up one for one. If you have been told your line is bell-shaped, there is no column for it above. What the table offers instead is a shape reading and a height reading, which between them describe the same line without needing the fifth name.

Placing your own line

Pull the hair back and wet it. A dry hairline is a boundary between two similar colours; a wet one is a line you can follow.

Count the dips first. Two, one over each temple, is the M. None at all sends you to the other three. Then look at the two ends: corners with a flat run between them is rectangular, and an even curve with no corner anywhere is round. If the line rises and falls more than once, it is wave-shaped whatever the ends are doing.

Then take the height. Hold one finger level with the lowest point of the line and another level with the brow, and read the gap against the height of the forehead above it rather than against a ruler. That is the same comparison the three bands are built on.

Take both readings twice, on different days. A cowlick can put a dip into a rectangular hairline that is not a temple dip, and a wet line sits differently from a dry one. If the two attempts disagree on the shape, look again at the ends rather than at the middle, because the ends are the part that does not move.

What this table cannot tell you

The shares come from men with no hair loss. This is a chart of natural hairlines rather than a set of stages, and an M-shaped line sitting in the middle band is not an early anything.

The men were drawn from seven Asian populations. Whether the shares hold elsewhere is not answered here, and nothing on this page should be read as though it were.

Shape and height also leave out density, hair calibre and where the line sits relative to the ears. Two heads can carry the same combination and differ in all three, and those three change how a hairline reads at least as much as its shape does.

For the face-shape readings that sit below the hairline, see Face Shape Chart. The landmarks most guides ask you to take, and why one head can read two shapes, are worked through in What Is My Face Shape?. Hair length measured the same way, in millimetres and guard numbers, is in Hair Length Chart.