Pick a side photo or add your own: the 4 dots find your nose tip, lips and chin tip. See whether your lips sit behind, on or past the line.
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Lips in this photo
Just behind the line
Both lips sit just behind the nose-to-chin line, where most lips sit.
What changes how your lips look from the side
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One selfie gives your face shape, your strengths, your first tips for hair, brows or glasses, and how many more tips a report unlocks. The two larger CEVO reports add this side view: your lips and profile, plus hairstyles shown on your own face.
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Start free scanYour bones stay the same. A chin beard moves the chin end of the line, so it changes where your lips seem to sit.
Brings the chin end of the line forward, so lips that sit close to or past it sit a little further behind.
Tap one to see what it means.
Your result
Lips sit further behind the nose-to-chin line than most lips do.
Prop your phone at eye level, about 1.5 m away. Too close, and CEVO asks for another photo.
Free: your face shape, your strengths and your first tips, in plain words.
See how many more tips are waiting for you. Unlock them only if you want them.
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Your face shape and what suits you, free.
Every point of your face mapped from one selfie, plus a side photo for your profile.
Twelve regions of your face measured, from brows to jawline, plus the age your face reads as.
Hair, brows and skin changed on your photo. Your bone structure stays as it is.
The cuts that suit your face shape, side by side.
Brow shape, beard length and makeup picked for your features.
Hair, skin and grooming steps to follow for 90 days, made for your face.
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A straight line from your nose tip to your chin tip. The calculator shows whether each lip sits behind, on or past it.
The original targets came from European faces, and lip fullness varies, so a Close to or past the line result can be normal for you.
A chin that sits further back moves the line, so ordinary lips can look like they cross it. The side profile analyzer shows how your profile lines up.
Yes, with no change to bone. A slightly longer chin beard brings the chin forward, and gloss or matte lip colour changes how full lips look from the side.
We draw a line from your nose tip to your chin tip and measure how far each lip sits from it, as a share of that line's length. We compare that with Ricketts' targets (upper lip about 4 mm behind, lower about 2 mm, on an average face). Below: the dots, the targets and our sources.
When you look in the mirror straight on, you can see how wide your smile or cheekbones are, but you cannot see how far forward your nose, lips, and chin project. The E-line needs four points along the centre of your profile:
pronasale)The furthest forward point of your nose, the top end of the line.labrale superius) & lower lip (labrale inferius)The furthest forward points of your top and bottom lips. The calculator measures how far each sits from the nose-to-chin line, as a share of that line's length.pogonion)The bottom anchor of your Ricketts E-Line. Because the line connects your nose tip to your chin tip, a small chin can make normal lips look like they stick out, even when your lips and teeth are completely normal.Lip offset = distance from each lip to the nose-tip-to-chin line, measured square to it and divided by the line's length, negative behind it
Robert Ricketts (1968) set two targets for adults: the upper lip about 4 mm behind the line from nose tip to chin, and the lower lip about 2 mm behind it. The standard texts quote about 2 mm either side of the lower-lip target, and the targets came from European-ancestry faces.
Many East Asian and African faces naturally have fuller lips, so lips that touch or pass the line are common and normal there. If that is you, read a Close to or past the line result as normal for your face.
A phone photo has no ruler in it, so the calculator never reads millimetres off your photo. It measures each lip's distance from the line as a share of the line's own length, and turns Ricketts' targets into the same shares for a line of average length (about 65 mm). With a window of about 2 mm either side (for the upper lip we use the same window as the lower lip), an upper lip reads just behind the line from about 2 mm to 6 mm behind it on an average face, and a lower lip from about 0.5 mm to 4 mm behind it. On a nose-to-chin line of that length, the shares work out to the millimetres below.
| Reading | Target | Where it comes from | What the calculator says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upper lip | about 4 mm behind the line | Ricketts (1968); the window is ours | From about 2 mm to 6 mm behind the line: just behind the line. Further back: further behind. Further forward: close to, on or past the line. The 2 mm window is the lower lip's, used for the upper lip too. |
| Lower lip | about 2 mm behind the line, give or take 2 mm | Ricketts (1968) | From about 0.5 mm to 4 mm behind the line: just behind the line. Further back: further behind. Closer: on or past the line. |
| On the line | within about 0.5 mm of it | Our rule | A lip this close reads On the line; further in front reads Past the line. |
| At the edge | up to about 0.75 mm past the edge of the window | Our rule | Still reads Just behind the line, and the result names the answer that lip is close to. A dot on a phone photo can't be placed closer than that, so a lip this close to the edge never gets a firmer answer. |
| One lip off | the two lips read differently | Our rule | The result names the lip, for example Upper lip further behind the line. |
| Both lips | one off each way | Our rule | One lip further behind and the other close to or past the line reads One lip back, one forward: check both lip dots first. |
Ward et al. (2018) showed that a photo taken from about 30 cm (12 in) makes the nose look wider than one taken from about 1.5 m (5 ft). Bryan et al. (2012) found that people read faces differently when the photo is taken from close up. On a side photo, the nose sits closest to the lens, so it looks bigger and the nose-to-chin line moves.
Holding the phone in one hand and looking out of the corner of your eye to tap the shutter also turns your head a little toward the camera. Even a small turn moves the nose tip and hides part of the chin. Prop the phone about 1.5 m away, turn your whole body sideways and use a timer.
Braces and surgery change teeth and bone. A chin beard changes where the chin end of the line falls, and lip colour changes how full your lips look from the side, with no change to the bone:
If you'd like your chin to look further forward, a beard kept a little longer on the front of the chin, with the hair under the jaw trimmed short, brings the chin end of the line forward. A long front does the opposite for lips that already sit further behind the line: it pushes the chin end out, so they sit even further behind it.
If you'd like your lips to look fuller from the side, gloss and lighter shades help. Matte and deeper shades make them look less full.
Ricketts RM (1968). Esthetics, environment, and the law of lip relation. American Journal of Orthodontics, 54(4), 272–289.
Holdaway RA (1983). A soft-tissue cephalometric analysis and its use in orthodontic treatment planning. Part I. American Journal of Orthodontics, 84(1), 1–28.
Arnett GW, Jelic JS, Kim J, et al. (1999). Soft tissue cephalometric analysis: diagnosis and treatment planning of dentofacial deformity. American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, 116(3), 239–253.
Powell N, Humphreys B (1984). Proportions of the Aesthetic Face. Thieme Medical Publishers (New York).
Ward B, Ward M, Fried O, Paskhover B (2018). Nasal Distortion in Short-Distance Photographs: The Selfie Effect. JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, 20(4), 333–335.
Bryan R, Perona P, Adolphs R (2012). Perspective distortion from interpersonal distance is an implicit visual cue for social judgments of faces. PLoS ONE, 7(9), e45301.
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