How to part your hair according to your face shape
With so much emphasis on make-up, contouring and highlighting these days, little attention is given to the impact that the way you part your hair plays in accentuating your facial features. A very simple alteration to your parting can shorten or elongate your face, emphasise your cheekbones and soften sharp angles. Below is a snapshot of what the professionals think best suits each face shape.
Round Face Shape
Recommended parting - middle or deep side
Having a deep side part elongates your features whilst a centre parting creates flattering symmetry around your face, so if you have a round face shape, you have a choice of two, depending on what you're trying to achieve. It is also advisable to avoid adding too many layers to your hairstyle if your face shape is round, as this can have the opposite effect to the one you want, ask your stylist to add just enough layers to slim the face without bulking it out too much.
Oval Face Shape
Recommended parting - any
People with an oval face shape are blessed in that they suit any position of hair parting, middle, side or deep side, making it one of the easiest faces to style for. The general advice here is to play around with your parting and see which one you feel best captures your personality. It may be that there are practical reasons why you want your parting in a particular place e.g. to keep your hair from going in your eyes, or maybe for ease, you just want to stick with the natural way your hair parts. Whatever the reason, it's comforting to know that whatever you do, you're going to look great.
Square Face Shape
Recommended parting - side with bangs
As square faces can be quite angular, and the sides of the face are rather straight, a gentle side parting will go a long way to soften your features. You should only go for a deep side parting if you wish to elongate your features, however, be careful not to go too deep with it as it will then accentuate the angles commonly associated with a square face. Ideally, you need to leave just enough skin showing on your forehead to allow your bangs to relax the severity of your angled jawline.
Heart Face
Recommended parting - deep side
A much less common face shape, the heart shaped face will benefit greatly from a deep side part, which will nicely break up the chin line, which can be somewhat pointed. It will also soften your cheekbones. You might also want to experiment with layers to help enhance your unique features, but don’t be tempted to do anything drastic as it could widen your face more than you’d like it to. Half up, half down styles are really complimentary for this face shape.
Diamond face
Recommended parting - side
Diamond shaped faces really benefit from a side parting as it brings out the best in your strong bone structure, particularly your striking cheekbones. Whatever you do though, don’t be tempted to go for bangs, especially short ones, and consider shorter styles, which really complement diamond shaped faces with their smaller foreheads. Overly long hairstyles with will potentially overshadow your face.
Oblong Face
Recommended parting - middle
Because having an oblong shaped face can make it look quite long and thin, a middle parting helps to add the illusion of roundness and softens it up a bit. Bangs are also recommended to help shorten the overall look, whilst adding some layers to your hair accentuates your cheekbones and jawline.
How to change your hair parting?
Re-training your hair to part in a different position can take some training if it is different to your natural parting. To train it, use a comb to create the part you want whilst it is damp after washing then, keeping it in position, tie your hair back and leave it like that overnight. This will need to be repeated until it is trained.
