How to Choose the Best Sunglasses for Your Face

The right pair of sunglasses can work wonders on your appearance. They can add an air of casual class to any outfit or help highlight the best features of your face. Of course, they can kill a look just as quickly. It’s all about choosing the right sunglasses for the shape of your face.

Determine Your Face Shape
This can be hard to figure out for a lot of people, especially if you don’t tend to spend a lot of time in front of a mirror. There are four basic face shapes—square, round, heart and oval. Here’s a quick guide.

• Square: Highlighted by a strong jawline roughly the same width as your forehead.
• Round: When you smile, or even when you don’t, is the widest part of your face found in your cheeks? If so, you have a round face.
• Heart: Identified by a broader forehead that narrows into a sharper jawline and chin often giving the appearance of an upside down heart, hence the name.
• Oval: An oval, or long face is characterized by a fairly uniform appearance from top to bottom in the shape of, well, an oval.

You’ve got to figure out your face shape before you can begin to select a pair of sunglasses.

Choose the Right Style
The shape of the sunglasses you choose should be opposite the shape of your face. So, a square face goes well with circular or rounded shades. You might be able to get by with the classic aviator style too, depending on which you prefer. Rounded sunglasses will help your jawline stand out, which you want, rather then make it blend in.

Guys and gals with a rounded face will want to look for square or rectangular sunglasses. Reason being the contrast will help add angles to your features while also elongating your face. You definitely don’t want to place circles upon circles, so avoid rounded or aviator designs at all costs.

Heart-shaped faces also pair well with rectangular sunglasses because they work to balance out the contrasts that exist between your forehead and your slimmer chin. They also have more options when it comes to lens sizes, depending on shape. Look for a lens that correlates with the overall width of your face—so smaller lenses for slimmer faces and larger lenses for wider faces.

Choosing the right pair of sunglasses for an oval face is a tad trickier than the others. People with this shape have to avoid wearing sunglasses that’ll make your face appear thinner than it already is. Rounded and square shades are both options as long that they don’t extend past the widest point of the face. This face tends to work well with sunglasses with rims that only cover the top half of the lenses.

Pay Attention to the Temple
The temple is the piece that goes alongside you head and over your ears to keep your shades in place. They’re connected to the rims and are often the same color and material. The style of the temple is entirely up to you, but pay attention to the thickness and how they sit on your ears. If they’re too thick they can raise the level at which the shades sit on your face, making it off-center.

For summer months, we say the thinner the better. Metallic silver is always a great option, but as with most areas of fashion black never goes out of style.

At the end of the day it’s all about what looks good on you, to you. If you want to funk it up a little with zebra print or wooden designs, have a blast ladies and gents.