What is my fWHR?
Cheekbone width over upper-face height — the definition the research uses.
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Bizygomatic width divided by upper-face height. Measured on your device. Nothing is uploaded.
What this measures
Facial width-to-height ratio is cheekbone-to-cheekbone width divided by the height of the upper face, measured from the upper lip to the highest point of the eyelids. The upper-face part is what people most often get wrong when calculating it by hand: it is not the whole face, and using chin-to-brow instead produces a number around a third smaller that cannot be compared with any published figure. Measured populations centre near 1.9, with most faces falling between about 1.6 and 2.2. fWHR has a real research literature behind it, mostly on perceived dominance and on behaviour in competitive settings, and that literature is contested — several of the larger replications have found much weaker effects than the original studies. It is included here because it is a well-defined measurement with a stated definition, not because a high or low value means anything about you.
How to read this
- Height is measured from the upper lip to the highest point of the eyelids — the upper face only, not to the chin.
- Most faces measure between 1.6 and 2.2. The population centre is near 1.9.
- Higher means a wider face relative to the upper third. Lower means a longer one.
- Eyelid position moves this number, so a wide-eyed expression measures lower than a relaxed one.
Bizygomatic width divided by upper-face height.
- Below typical 0 – 1.6
- Upper face is tall relative to its width.
- Typical, lower half 1.6 – 1.9
- Inside the usual range, below the population centre.
- Typical, upper half 1.9 – 2.2
- Inside the usual range, above the population centre.
- Above typical 2.2 – 4
- Wide relative to the upper-face height. Check the photo is square-on.
Method
Every measurement here comes from 478 facial landmarks detected by Google's MediaPipe face mesh, running as WebAssembly in your browser. The face is levelled by the eye line before anything is measured, and every distance is normalised so the result does not depend on your camera or how close you stood to it.
Questions
How is fWHR calculated?
Width between the two zygions — the widest point of each cheekbone — divided by the vertical distance from the upper lip to the highest point of the eyelids. The upper-face height is the part that distinguishes it from a face length-to-width ratio.
What does a high fWHR mean?
In the research, a higher ratio is associated with judgements of dominance rather than with any trait a person has. The size of that association has shrunk considerably in larger replication attempts, so it is best read as a fact about how faces are perceived, not about the people behind them.
Does fWHR change with weight?
Yes, more than most facial measurements. Fat over the cheeks increases the measured width while the upper-face height barely moves, so the ratio rises with weight gain and falls with weight loss even though the underlying bone is unchanged.
Read more about this measurement
Measure something else
The app's harmony score reads proportions like this one alongside the rest of the face.