Selecting Glasses for Your Face Length

Anne Wilterdink Morgan: Hello! I am Anne Wilterdink Morgan with Color and Image Insight. I am showing you how to choose the most flattering eyeglasses. Right now, I am showing you how to balance the length of your face shape with your glasses. So, in addition to being angled or contoured, a face also can be short, long or balanced. This gives an example of balanced proportions. Now, as we look at Terry, you can see, if we pull back her bangs a little bit that, we notice the overall shape of her face there, compare it to the balanced proportions and you probably or already seeing that it looks a little bit short comparatively, okay?

So, another way to consider this is, think in terms of the ideal proportions being a three to two ratio; three length, two width. If you dont want to be bothered with taking the measurements, what you can actually do is just visually cover about a third of the way down and say, okay, it is what remains equal in length and width, or it is a little bit longer or a little shorter. In this case, we are seeing it is a little shorter.

So, in fact her face shape is a shorter face shape rather than a wide or longer one. So, how do we address this in choosing glasses? What we are going to try to do is, create the illusion of more length with her glasses. Now, one way to do that is to consider the depth of the glasses.

Just as for the figure when you are wearing a belt. If you are a shorter or wider type of person then you are not gong to be look as balanced if you are wearing a wide belt. It is going to breakup the width, length of your body too much. Similarly, a tall thin person is going to look much better in that wide belt.

So, with the glasses then, for a wider or shorter face shape. You want to go with a narrower frame, top to bottom then if you were a longer face shape. So, for example, you notice how much narrower this type of frame is than something like this, okay?

Another thing that you can consider is the distance from the bottom of the face to the temple or side piece of the glasses. So, for a short wide face like Terry, she is going to be better of having the temple be as high on the glasses as possible, right at that upper corner, if you can. So, this is an example of choosing one that is very high. That creates more distance from the bottom of the face to the top of the glasses, more unbroken length. Contrast that with a pair where the temple is a little bit lower and you can see that breaks up the length of the face more. Another nice thing for your shorter face shape is to have a little bit of an up tilt at the outer corner; again creating that greater length when you are looking at the bottom of the face to the top of the glass. So, that tilt up draws the eyes up and gives an illusion of length. Now, contrast that what you do for the long or narrow face shape, here you want to have a strong horizontal if possible to create a greater sense of width. You want the frames to come all the way out to the sides of the face, unlike what you do with the shorter or wider face shape where the actual length is come in a little bit, the frame goes all the way out to same side, so that it can still meet the criteria of fit that we talked about earlier, but here the length is come out much further.

Also, you have some eye catching detail at the outer parts of the face to draw the eyes outward and create more of a sense of width for a long or a narrow face. So, those are some ideas on how to balance the length of your face shape with your glasses.