If you’re not blessed with a long face, don’t worry! There are plenty of ways to make your face appear shorter. By using the right makeup and hairstyle tricks, you can create the illusion of a shorter face shape. Keep reading for tips on how to shorten a long face. Read on for more.
The face is a major part of a person’s appearance. How a face looks is important because it can reflect one’s personality and confidence, in addition to the other body parts that make up an individual’s beauty.
There are several different face shapes, but the rarest shape is when someone has a long face. When looking at them from the front, their forehead and chin may look much longer than usual compared to their cheekbones. In addition, a long face can make an individual appear to have a long or narrow nose.
Why Is Your Face Long?
The human face is a fascinating structure, and in most cases, it can be broken down into thirds. These thirds include the forehead, nose, chin section, and cheekbones. Our faces have been likened to a work of art, with each part being beautifully proportioned designed especially for us. Our features were designed mainly due to genetic factors that influence our appearance. The head has varying measurements that create a balanced look when judged by society’s standards in all humans. There are several reasons why a person’s face may appear too long:
- Excessive vertical height
- Excessive horizontal width
- Excessive middle third vertical height
- All of the above
A Detailed Guide on How to Shorten a Long Face
Trick 1: Style Your Hair
Styling your hair is a simple and effective way to bring attention away from your face and any other part of your body. Shortened hairstyles such as the pixie or shag can be used to bring out your cheekbones and alleviate any stress you may have on how long your face is. Styling Tips:
If you have wavy hair, use a curling iron to curl under at the ends, creating more volume towards the bottom of the hair. This will shorten it by bringing more volume up.
Use one of those mesh shower caps with towels wrapped around it for faster results after a shower if you do not have time to style it later.
What Not To Do:
- Do not wear your hair straight and flat against your face, as this will elongate it.
Trick 2: Mewing
Mewing, also known as the fish face, is an effective but complicated way to shorten your face. However, with the proper instructions, this popular cat meme can be used to show off your cheekbones while simultaneously shortening your face.
- Bring lips in closely together until they almost touch and apply some pressure to stay close. At this point, you should try to open your eyes as wide as possible without actually opening them completely while still using some pressure on the lips.
- A common mistake when mewing is simply bringing lips together, leaving a small distance between them which has no natural effect of shortening anything except for maybe giving you that kissy look. This is a crucial trick in how to shorten a long face.
Trick 3: Growing Beard
This technique is beneficial for those with long faces. It will cover the sides of your face and give you something to cup in your chin, creating a slightly more filled-out face. How To Apply:
- Grow out beard as long as possible for best results. If time is short, trim it so that it’s not too short but longer than what currently exists on your face.
- Make sure to keep facial hair trimmed shorter near the edges around the sideburns and cheekbones to make them stand out further from the rest of the beard, creating a much more defined look.
What Not To Do:
- Do not try this if you do not have a thick enough beard to support this look, as it will make your face appear even longer
Trick 4: Round off a Long Face
Rounding off the face is an effective trick done by widening the jawline slightly. You can make slight changes in your facial structure if this is something you want.
- One way of rounding off a long face would be to move the corners of your mouth upwards towards your ears while keeping your eyes pointed down at about 30 degrees or lower.
- This trick works best for those with naturally rounder faces who have more cheekbones than they do chin which will help bring attention up and away from the length of their face.
- If you are someone with not much on your cheeks, then applying a little bit of blush will give you the illusion of having more there.
- If you apply this look but do not have enough cheekbone to make it work, go to any drugstore and buy a cream contour kit that matches your skin tone or if available, use a bronzing lotion. Apply this underneath your cheekbones and blend into the rest of your face around your eyes and nose.
What Not To Do:
- It is best not to take this trick too far as it can only lengthen your face even further, making it appear way longer than it is, so be careful with how much you take off on either side of the jawline, as taking off too much will take away from your face making them look even longer.
- This will not work if you do not have cheekbones, so if you are someone with no bone structure, take this trick off the list and try one of the other tricks that may work better for your face shape.
Trick 5: Facial Bone Contouring
Facial bone contouring may be the most effective way to shorten a long face. But, this treatment doesn’t come without risks. The procedure involves shaping the bones of your face to create an overall shorter appearance, but it can affect facial stability because bones are moved or reduced in size. The bone reduction could leave your facial features out of balance. It’s important to discuss this risk with your doctor before surgery.
If you decide that facial bone contouring procedures are correct for you, several different techniques are available to help shorten a long face. Your doctor will recommend the procedure that works best for your situation and build up healthy tissues afterward to support weakened muscles and preserve facial structure. This leads us into our final trick of the trade.
Trick 6: Makeup
The final trick is not a facial shortening solution, but it’s more of a work-around to get over the fact that you have a long face.
Your eyes should be angled downwards at 30 degrees or lower and closer to 15 degrees if possible for this trick to work best. How To Apply:
When applying makeup, it’s essential to keep in mind the balance of light and dark colors.
Dark colors will surround your face making it appear much smaller. In contrast, bright colors will make your face look more significant than what it is, so when applying makeup, stay away from all things bright, especially around the nose area, which will widen that part of your face even more.
- Apply black eyeliner on your bottom lash line and blend it upwards. Tight lining your upper waterline will also help make your eye appear smaller from the outside.
- Bend the tip of your applicator by about half an inch, then use a concealer that is two shades lighter than your natural skin tone to highlight under your eyes, under your brows, on the center of your forehead, and down the center of your nose. Doing this will make those features pop outward, giving the illusion that they are closer together, which makes them look shorter, shortening up a long face naturally.
You Can check it Out to Contour a Fat Face
Conclusion
With a few simple tricks, you can start to see a noticeable difference in the appearance of your face. By following our article on how to shorten a long face, you’ll be well on your way to looking and feeling more confident in no time at all.
