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Reviewed October 6, 2026

What is facial depth?

Facial depth is how far the face projects forward when you look at it from the side, from the ear back toward the front of the nose and chin. Clinicians read it through the facial convexity angle, the bend that runs from the brow, past the nose, down to the chin. That single angle is what makes one profile look straight and another look softly rounded.

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Facial depth measured on a female side-profile portrait

How It's Measured

How is facial depth measured?

Facial depth is a side-profile measurement. It asks a simple question: how far forward does the face sit, from the ear region out to the front of the nose and chin?

  • Glabella: the smooth ridge between the brows, where the profile line begins.
  • Subnasale to pronasale: the base and the tip of the nose, the middle of the bend.
  • Pogonion: the most forward point of the soft-tissue chin, where the line ends.

Join those points and you get the facial convexity angle, the standard way to put a number on how straight or curved a profile is (Naini, 2011)(Akter, 2017). A near-straight line reads as a flat, forward-projecting face. A sharper bend reads as a more convex one.

Two copies of the same female side-profile face with the facial depth drawn on each, the right one with a shallower face from front to back
Figure 1-Facial depth

Left: the original side-profile photo. Right: the same person with a shallower face from front to back. The facial depth goes from 152.0 mm to 143.2 mm, and nothing else in the photo changed.

Why It Matters

Why does facial depth matter?

Facial depth is one of the first things the eye picks up in profile, even when nobody can name it. The facial convexity angle captures whether the chin and midface sit in balance, or whether one is pushed forward and the other set back. A strongly convex profile usually means the chin sits behind the rest of the face; a flatter profile reads as a firmer, more forward jawline (Naini, 2011).

There is no single correct angle, and this is where most charts mislead. Convexity shifts with ancestry. South Asian profiles, including Bangladeshi faces, tend to run fuller and more convex than Northern European ones, and that is a normal population difference rather than a fault (Akter, 2017). A Western textbook mean will misjudge a face it was never drawn from.

So treat the old canons as reference lines, not verdicts. They came from particular groups at particular times, and applying them without that context ignores how much a profile changes with sex, age, and background (Vegter, 2000). The card and table below give you the working numbers to compare against.

138°–146°

Men

142°–149°

Women

137°–150°

Typical Range

Figure 2-Typical facial depth ranges for men and women

Total facial convexity angle, read from the brow past the nose to the chin. These values shift with individual facial structure and background.

Demographic Variants

Ideal Facial Convexity by Demographic

Facial depth and convexity vary by population, so one ideal angle cannot fit every face. Most of the difference sits in how far the nose and chin project. Each row links to its source.

Population

Total facial convexity

Source

Northern European / Caucasian

Straighter profiles; the long-standing Western reference norm

Naini, 2011

Mediterranean & West Asian

Total facial convexity roughly 138 to 149 degrees, women straighter than men

Akter, 2017

South Asian (Bangladeshi)

Fuller, more convex profile than European norms

Akter, 2017

Arab (Saudi)

Skeletal cephalometric norms differ from Western standards, with wider variance

Alshahrani, 2018

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1

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POSES REQUIRED

  • Front Face
  • Right Side Profile
  • Left Side Profile
  • Right Quarter Profile
2

Facial Assessments

We measure 160+ facial markers, including skin quality, symmetry, eye shape, brow density, and more.

  • Ear protrusion
  • Chin projection (receding vs balanced)
  • Eyebrow density
  • Nose symmetry
  • Smile line detection
  • Nose symmetry
3

Personalized Report

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Emma’s Report

January 16, 2026

20μm60μmAVERAGE WRINKLE DEPTH25.00μm
OUTER CORNERMIDINNER CORNER-25-20-15-10-50510152025

Explanation

Your forehead wrinkle depth aligns with expectations for your age and demographic, falling on the lower end of our predicted range.

Your Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

There is no one ideal. In soft-tissue analysis the total facial convexity angle, measured from the brow past the nose to the chin, usually falls between about 138 and 149 degrees in adults, and women tend to sit straighter than men (Akter, 2017). A higher number means a flatter, more forward face; a lower one means a more convex profile. What reads as ideal depends on your sex and your ancestry.

You take a side-profile photo and mark three points: the glabella between the brows, the base or tip of the nose, and the most forward point of the chin. The angle where those lines meet is your facial convexity angle (Akter, 2017). Standard facial anthropometry fixes the landmarks and reference planes so the reading repeats cleanly (Armengou, 2023).

A higher facial convexity angle means a straighter profile, with the brow, nose, and chin close to one line. A lower angle means a more convex profile, usually because the chin sits back or the midface pushes forward (Naini, 2011). Neither is a flaw by itself. The reading only means something against your own face and background.

Yes. The profile keeps shifting well after childhood as the jaw and chin grow forward and the soft tissue settles, a pattern tracked in long-term growth studies (Naini, 2011). A convexity angle measured in the teens will not match the same face read in adulthood.