Men care about their brows, too! In the past decade or so, men of all ages have been showing more interest in grooming and improving their appearance, so the beauty industry has been targeting men more and more.
One aspect of male beauty that’s been particularly popular are eyebrows – their shape, color and volume. Brows are a very important feature, so a men eyebrow shape which suits your face the best can truly transform your look and make you even more handsome.
Here’s an overview of the best men eyebrow shape for every face, and a walkthrough on grooming your brows into each shape.
What’s the Most Common Men Eyebrow Shape?
Men’s natural brows don’t show that much diversity as women’s; there are 4 equally common arch shapes most men have:
- Arch with a sharp angle
- Arch with a soft angle
- Flat arch
- Rounded arch
The ideal men eyebrow shape depends on the rest of the facial features, mainly the shape of the face, but also the size of the forehead and the position of the hairline. The thickness of the brows is another factor to be considered.
How to Choose the Best Men Eyebrow Shape
The brow shape you were born with may not necessarily be the ideal one for your face. Luckily, this is one of the easiest imperfections to correct – brows can be manipulated into a different shape relatively easily.
Let’s go through each shape and match them to facial features.
Before We Start
Bear in mind that the general principle behind choosing the best men eyebrow shape is the harmony of opposites. Meaning, if you have a rounded face with less prominent features, the best brow shape is a sharper one, which will add definition. And the opposite – if you have sharp features, a soft arch without sharp edges will soften it.
Arch with a Sharp Angle
Angled arches can do wonders for a round face. A brow arch which features a prominent angle towards the tail gives definition to a round face and makes it look less circular. It visually lifts the features in the upper half of the face and makes the face look more elongated.
Contrary to the popular belief, sharp aches aren’t just for women – they can look very manly and give the face a more mature, serious look.
A very sharp angle isn’t really compatible if the rest of your features are sharp, though. If you have very sharp cheekbones, a sharply angled brow can clash with them, so it needs to be softened a bit.
Image source: Instagram @johnboyega
Arch with a Soft Angle
More or less universal, the softly angled men eyebrow shape suits almost any face. It can give subtle definition to oval faces, but it can also complement a more elongated face, and works well with sharp cheekbones, unlike a very sharp angle.
This men eyebrow shape doesn’t draw so much attention to the eyebrows themselves, but rather frames the eyes nicely and lets them take center stage.
Image source: Instagram @idriselba
Flat Arch
A flat arch is perfect for an elongated face, regardless of the shape of the jawline. It complements both an oval face with a rounded jawline, and a more square face with a sharp jawline.
Flat brows visually shorten a longer face. They make both the lower half of the face and the forehead appear shorter, creating a type of barrier and visually separating the face into 2 sections.
Image source: Instagram @zayn
Rounded Arch
A rounded arch with a curve rather than an angle works best for sharp features. It softens them and makes the face appear more youthful. The choice of eyebrow shape should generally be based on contrast, so a rounded arch isn’t a great choice for a round face – it will make it look even less defined.
Image source: Instagram @ykaaar
How Can I Achieve the Perfect Arch?
Grooming men’s eyebrows is much easier than you may think, provided your brows are on the fuller side and you have enough hair to manipulate.
How to Achieve Angled Brows
An angled arch is achieved by removing excess hairs from the bottom of the brow arch, in the outer half of the brows, towards the ears. The tail should start slanting downwards starting from the highest point of the upper brow edge. If you want a sharper angle, remove more hairs and thin out the tail more, making it more pointy.
You can remove the excess hairs by tweezing them out or waxing them off, or you can try trimming with a pair of brow scissors first – this might give the desired effect with minimal effort.
How to Achieve Flat Arches
If you want to flatten your brow arches, remove the excess hairs from the highest, sharpest point of the upper brow edge. Just don’t go overboard and don’t thin out the arch too much. You can sharpen the very tip of the tails a bit, to refine the shape a bit.
Trimming here probably won’t work, so you can tweeze out the unwanted hairs, or get a professional wax.
How to Achieve Rounded Arches
This shape is the trickiest to achieve, and you need to have fuller, bushier brows to work with. You can remove the excess hairs from the upper and lower edge of the brows, trimming the hairs where necessary. Thin out the tails a bit to give the shape some definition.
For a more detailed description of all brow grooming methods for men, check out this article.
What Can I Do If My Brows Lack Volume?
Thick brows are relatively easy to shape, but not all of us are blessed with voluminous brows. If your brows are sparse, there’s very little hair to work with, so you can’t really shape them into perfection.
The solution comes in the form of microblading, a form of permanent makeup that gives the brows up to 2 years of volume.
We know what you’re thinking – brow makeup probably isn’t something that sounds too appealing. But although microblading technically falls under the category of permanent makeup, it doesn’t give a makeup look. What the treatment does is tattoo tiny little strokes into the brow arch that imitate actual hairs. When done right, the results can look so natural nobody will be able to tell you’ve had any work done.
The strokes fade over time, and within 2 years, they should fade out completely, unless you refresh them.
Microblading can create any brow shape you want. It’s a great service because it’s totally customizable, meaning the arches are created with mathematical precision so that they suit your features in the best way possible. It can enhance your brows, or even create the arches from scratch for clients who don’t have brows due to various reasons.
For more information on microblading for men, check out this guide.
Image source: Instagram @browsbymorgan
So, What Are the Benefits of Grooming Your Brows into Shape?
Most men don’t really like spending too much time on grooming and beauty treatments, so they don’t do anything to their brows. Ever. But eyebrows are such a prominent feature that tweaking them even a little bit can give you the improvement you didn’t even know you needed.
Grooming your brows and keeping them in the perfect men eyebrow shape can keep you looking neat and tidy, bring out the attractiveness of your features, and draw attention to your eyes. So groom away!
Cover image source: Freepik
