8 Facial Features That Contribute to a Balanced Appearance
Our brains feel rewarded when we look at someone who has a balanced face. But what is it that makes a face appear harmonious?
Different facial cosmetic features can contribute to a balanced appearance when they come together. Big, alert eyes, a small, proportional nose, defined cheeks, a well-defined jawline, and full lips usually grab people’s attention.
Dr Michael Kernohan offers his patients a full spectrum of surgical and non-surgical facial cosmetic procedures designed to help achieve their desired results.
Facial Symmetry and Proportion
Wide eyes, full cheeks, and a refined nose are essential features of a balanced face. However, facial balance is more than the sum of these parts. It’s about how all your facial features come together. How your eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, and jaw look relative to each other. It’s all about proportions and symmetry.
Many plastic surgeons refer to this facial balance ratio as the “golden ratio.” The golden ratio is, of course, just a figure of speech. An experienced facial plastic surgeon can adapt this golden ratio of facial balance to fit individual patient needs.
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What Are Facial Features That Contribute to a Balanced Appearance?
When you first look at a person’s face you might find it very attractive without knowing what it is exactly about it that’s so appealing. There’s something about their face that looks balanced and harmonious.
At a closer look, you’ll notice there are specific facial features that contribute to this balance.
1. A smooth forehead
A wrinkle-free forehead is one of the features that make the face look composed. When the forehead is smooth, your face seems calm and peaceful which most people find appealing.
You can carry a lot of your worry and stress on your forehead and it shows up as forehead wrinkles. A wrinkled forehead makes it look like you’re stressed out or living an unhealthy lifestyle even if you’re not. This can make your face look tired, angry, or less appealing to others.
Also, a lot of your facial expressions (surprise, concern, shock) show on your forehead. Wrinkles on the forehead become even deeper when you make a facial expression and they can make your expressions come across as exaggerated and unnatural.
Dr Kernohan offers his patients surgical and non-surgical solutions to get a smooth looking forehead including:
- Facial Injectables: These can be volumising substances that are injected to fill in wrinkles. Muscle relaxant injections can smoothen your forehead’s worry lines and get rid of the fine lines between the brows. Nevertheless, they only offer temporary results
- Upper facelift (brow lift): this cosmetic surgery is done to reduce forehead wrinkles for a longer period of time. A forehead lift tightens the forehead, flattens its wrinkled skin, and removes forehead skin folds. You can also get a full facelift if you want to modify all of your face and not just your forehead
2. Alert eyes
Your eyes can be the first thing people notice in your face. Symmetric and alert, eyes are essential cosmetic features of a balanced face.
And when you’re having a conversation or giving a presentation, making eye contact is very important to hold someone’s attention. Having alert and wide-looking eyes makes you look more engaging and energetic which makes your entire face look more charismatic.
As you age, your eyebrows and eyelids start to droop making your face look less pretty because:
- Descending eyelids and puffy eyes can make you look tired and sleepy, and make your eyes look uneven. As a result, your face looks more exhausted and less appealing
- Ptotic, heavy eyelids can also interfere with your eyesight which makes you squint to see better. This makes your eyes look smaller and deepens the wrinkles around your eyes
That’s why eyelid surgery, or blepharoplasty, is very popular. By removing excess skin, muscle, and fat around your eyes, a blepharoplasty gives you wider, bigger, and brighter eyes. Consequently, your face looks well-rested, and more energetic.
3. Symmetric nose
Your nose is the centre of attention on your face. A symmetric and proportional nose brings all your other facial features in harmony.
A straight and refined nose balances out the rest of your face while you’re smiling.
On the other hand, your face loses a lot of its appeal if your nose is perceived as too big, too small, too wide, or asymmetric since:
- A misshapen nose takes away the attention from beautiful features on your face such as your eyes, lips, and cheeks
- If the nose is too big or too wide, the eyes and lips will appear small in comparison
- A crooked nose can make the rest of your face seem uneven
- Flared nostrils can give the impression that you’re angry or displeased with something
Luckily, a nose reshaping surgery, known as rhinoplasty, can fix the nose’s appearance and bring out the balance in your face. There are different types of nose jobs:
- Rhinoplasty – Nose Reshaping surgery
- Septoplasty: to fix a deviated septum and straighten a crooked nose
- Alarplasty: to make the nostrils smaller and narrower
- Tip plasty: to refine the shape of the nose tip
- Nose bridge reduction: to make the nose look smaller by removing bone and cartilage from the nasal bridge
Dr Kernohan has extensive experience in performing nose jobs that sculpt the nose and result in a more harmonious face.
4. Defined cheeks
When people think you look good, they’ll often tell you that you’re looking cheerful. Having defined cheeks creates a lively and high-spirited face and is an important cosmetic feature.
Your cheeks play a central role in how your face looks to others.
As you get older, your face skin loses its elasticity and starts to descend and wrinkle. The signs of facial ageing can be especially visible in your cheeks. Heavy and ptotic cheeks can add years to your face and make it look as if you’re tired all the time.
Fortunately, there are several ways to make the cheeks perky again and freshen your face:
- Mid facelift: lifts the cheeks into a more defined position. If you have other descending facial features, a full facelift can reposition and tighten your entire face
- Cheek implants: implants are placed inside the cheeks to give them more volume.
- Facial Fat grafting: fat is taken from other areas of the body and injected into the cheeks. It’s the most natural way to define the cheeks
- Facial Fillers: if you want to avoid surgery, fillers can be injected to contour and plump up the cheeks. Nonetheless, dermal fillers don’t have permanent results and you’ll likely need repeated injections.
In contrast, if the cheeks are too full, your face might appear too chubby. Buccal fat pad removal surgery takes out some of the fat in the cheeks to make your face look slimmer.
CLICK to Download Dr Michael Kernohan Facial Rejuvenation Guide
5. Well defined Jawline
Your jaw outlines and contours your whole face. A well-defined jawline gives your face a strong and prominent look – one of the top sought after features of facial balance.
Excess jaw skin and descending jowls fade out the appealing angle created between the neck and the chin making the face look weak and old.
The jaw shouldn’t be too wide or too narrow. A wide jaw can make the face look too big or too round. While a narrow jaw can make the face look too slim or too small.
Dr Kernohan can recontour the jawbones and give the face a stronger outline using:
- Lower facelift surgery: emphasises the jawline and improves its contour
- Neck lift surgery: tones the neck and defines its outline. This restores the sharp angle between the neck and the face
- Jaw reshaping surgery (orthognathic surgery): shaves the jaw bone to sculpt the jawline or reduce the size of the jaw
Lower facelift and neck lift outline, contour and tighten the jawbones gives them a stronger look, a more prominent appearance/ outlines and emphasises them.
6. Refined Chin
The chin puts some of the final touches on the outline of your face. A refined chin can give your face an elegant look. That’s why it’s considered an important characteristic of a harmonious face.
A weak receding chin that projects backward towards the neck disrupts the natural contour of the face and ruins its aesthetic balance. If the chin is too pointy, the face looks too long and too narrow from the bottom. And if the chin is too round, your face looks too short and too wide from the bottom.
Depending on your standards, you may or may not find cleft chin a characteristic of a balanced face. Either way, if the chin dimple is too deep in the middle, the chin could look like it is split in two. This can disturb your facial proportions, especially in the lower part.
Over the years, Dr Kernohan perfected several chin augmentation techniques to reshape the chin while maintaining a completely natural look. Chin surgery, also known as genioplasty or mentoplasty, is done to:
- Make the chin bigger using chin implants
- Make the chin smaller by removing excess tissue and/ or shaving the chin bone
- Reshape the chin to make it more proportionate with the rest of the face
Dr Kernohan also offers cleft chin surgery to create, remove, or lessen a chin dimple.
7. Proportional Ears
A lot of people don’t notice how important ears are in creating an aesthetically balanced face. They play a key role in defining the face’s limits and proportions.
Overly large ears or ears that stick out can distract from other facial features. Ear surgery (otoplasty) can address these issues by reshaping the ears to better fit the overall facial proportions.
In doing so, Dr Kernohan balances the proportions of the ears with the rest of your facial features.
7. Full lips
Your lips get a lot of attention directed towards your face, especially when you’re talking.
The lips start slowly losing some of their volume with depletion of collagen and elastin or because of smoking and other habits. Thin and flat lips can make you look older than you actually are and alter your facial balance.
If the upper lip is too thin, it can disappear completely when you smile. This will make your gums very obvious when you laugh. Moreover, lips that are too narrow or too small can make the nose look too big in comparison or highlight a protruding chin.
Dr Kernohan offers various surgical and non-surgical procedures to restore the volume of the lips and give you a beautiful smile. These procedures include:
- Lip fillers: these are injections of volumising substances (e.g: Hyaluronic acid) that give the lips more volume
- Lip flip procedure: this is a non-surgical minor procedure to plump up the upper lip. It involves muscle relaxant injection around the mouth that will make the upper lip flip outward and cover the upper gum
- Lip lift surgery: this is a surgical procedure that lessens the distance between the nose and the top of the lip. As a result, the lip looks fuller and more pronounced
8. Healthy Skin
The condition of your skin significantly impacts the overall appearance of your face. Clear, healthy skin without blemishes, wrinkles, or uneven pigmentation can enhance your facial features.
Skin treatments like laser therapy, chemical peels, and skincare routines recommended by dermatologists can help maintain healthy skin.
Further Reading about Facial Surgery to create a Beautiful Face
- Dr Kernohan’s Facelift Surgery Page
- Dr Kernohan’s Blog about Facial Beauty – What is the Golden Ratio?
- Dr Kernohan’s Blog about Chubby Cheeks – Options for a slimmer face
- Dr Kernohan’s Blog about Recovery after Facelift
- Dr Kernohan’s Blog about Ageing Face
- Dr Kernohan’s Blog about What Makes an Attractive Jaw Profile?
- Dr Kernohan’s Blog about How to make your Nose Smaller
- Dr Kernohan’s Blog about Broken Nose Surgery – Break Your Nose?
- Dr Kernohan’s Blog about Types of Nose Shapes and Nose Jobs
