The Eyeglasses Guide, Part II: The Right Pair for Your Face & How to Buy

Unlike sunglasses which are typically only worn for short stretches of time, eyeglasses can be worn all day every day. As you might imagine, given this, finding the right pair of eyeglasses that suits your face shape, your skin tone, and your own personal sense of style can take a little bit of trial and error but it is possible.

Luckily, most of the same processes that go into choosing a pair of sunglasses also apply to eyeglasses. In general, make sure to adjust your expectations to the fact that you’ll be wearing eyeglasses for longer stretches of time. For example, aviator styles might look good as sunglasses but they might not work as all day eyeglasses.

How Do You Find The Right Style For You?

Determine Your Face Shape

The shape of your frames must play well with the shape of your face and as you might imagine, a pair of frames that looks good on one man might look completely out of place on another. There are six basic face shapes that every man fits into, you’re either square, round, oblong, diamond, heart-shaped, or oval. To find out what shape you are, you will need more than just a mirror. Ideally, you’ll also have handy a pencil and paper and someone to help you.

To begin the measuring process, we’ll start at the forehead measuring across from the widest point. Remember, don’t wrap the tape measure around the curvature of your head.We’re going to be measuring its dimensions as if it were a flat two-dimensional object since that’s essentially how it’s going to be seen when people are looking at you. The tape measure should only be touching one point on your head like a line tangent to a circle. Write down the number you measured for your forehead, it goes without saying that we’ll be writing down all of these numbers so you can compare them at the end of the measuring process to determine your face shape. Next, move downward to measure your cheekbones and then move downwards still to measure your jawline at its widest point. Finally, measure the length of your face by taking the tape measure and placing it vertically, first at the top of your forehead by your hairline and then down to the bottom of your chin. To determine which face shape you have, look at the numbers you’ve got and compare them to the advice we’re about to give for how to spot different face shapes.

Oblong

Oblong faces are longer than they are wide. For the most part, the measurements of your jawline, cheeks, and forehead will all be fairly similar. Smaller frames probably aren’t going to do you justice instead you should be going for a larger frame with some thickness to it. Sharp angles and concise lines are going to add some definition to your soft facial features and give you a more masculine look. So in general, rectangular frames could be a particularly good choice for an oblong face.

Heart

These are basically inverted triangles meaning that you have a smaller, more pointed chin in comparison to your cheek and forehead measurements which are wider and roughly about the same. The best frames for you are going to be ones that even out your faces proportions so opt for rimless or semi-rimless frames that are thinner in nature. If you do want a little bit more thickness in your frame, focus on finding a frame that points the attention downward toward the narrower part of your face at the chin.

Square

As you might well imagine, these are pretty much as long as they are wide and the edges of your face are probably going to be mostly straight up and down or straight across. In particular, at the jawline, you’re probably going to notice concise sharp corners rather than a more rounded gradual edge. Since you have a distinctive and chiseled face with bold features, you’re going to want round frames that softened the appearance overall. You should opt for a circular or generally rounded shape possibly with some frames that have some variation in thickness at different points around the rim.

Oval

Oval faces are roughly similar to the shape of an egg. Oval faces are typically longer than they are wide with a wider forehead a shorter jawline and a chin that’s typically more rounded. In general, be happy! Having an oval face means that you can wear almost any style of frame with ease. If you are finding a frame that you don’t think looks particularly good, it is possible that you have a different face shape than an oval and you might want to measure again.

Round

Rounded faces are also about as wide as they are long. The difference between a rounded face and a square face is that a rounded face typically has a narrower forehead and a narrower softer jawline. To provide contrasting balance here, opt for something that’s more geometrically shaped. In particular, a rectangular frame will lengthen your face a little bit and make it appear more like an oval shape.

Diamond

If your face is widest at the cheekbones with a narrow forehead and a narrow jawline there’s a good chance that you have a diamond face shape. With this shape, you want to focus on frames that complement your cheekbones but also provide some balance overall. Look for circular or rounded frames to offset the angles of your face and make sure that they’re on the narrower side so they don’t elongate your face further at the cheekbones.

Find Your Skin Tone

Let’s talk about finding your skin tone to give you some ideas about color. The easiest way to determine your skin tone is to look at the underside of your arm in natural daylight, don’t use artificial light because it might give you a false reading. You’re looking for two important factors here. First is the overall lightness or darkness of your skin and second and perhaps more important is the undertone.

There are three skin undertones; the first of these is warm which typically has a green, yellow, or peachy golden undertone to it, conversely, a cool undertone appears slightly bluish and the neutral undertone is what you have if you can’t really see a particular color or if you can’t determine whether you’re one or the other.

If you have light skin with cool undertones, that’s another way of saying that your skin will be light pink with a bluish undertone from your veins. In this case, you should probably consider lighter colored frames perhaps in shades of blue. Darker frames will make a bolder statement but they might have the potential to be more overpowering on your face.

If you have light skin with warm undertones, your skin will be golden or peachy and your veins will give a greenish undertone. In this case, you’ll still want to consider lighter frames but they should be in tortoiseshell, brown, amber, or green, for example, we can use me. I have light skin with warm undertones and my glasses are amber with slight suggestions of tortoiseshell patterning here and there. Again, dark frames are going to make a bold statement in this case, so you can wear them but exercise caution if you do.

If you have medium colored skin with cool undertones, your skin will generally be pink and the undertones will be blue from your veins. In this case, frames in medium to darker shades of red, green, blue, or brown, will probably look good on you.

If you have darker skin with cool undertones, dark frames are going to work well for you, black, dark browns, gunmetal, or deep blues, would be good options. For a more fashion-forward approach, you can experiment with lighter frames which are going to give you a more high contrast look.

Finally, if you have darker skin with warm undertones, metal frames, dark browns, cognacs, and amber shades, are the ones that are going to work best for you.

The Best Way To Buy A Pair Of Glasses

These days there’s an active conversation going on about whether or not it’s best to buy prescription eyeglasses from an online retailer. With the rise of game-changing brands like Warby Parker that are selling hip modern frames with a user-friendly interface, the industry overall has evolved.

In-Store vs Online

The biggest advantage to buying a pair of glasses in-store is that the professional staff there has been well trained. They’ll be able to assist you in all of the different elements of finding the right pair including frames, lenses, coatings, and so on. If you’ve bought a pair of glasses in-store, repairing or refitting broken or damaged glasses is easier too. You can just take them back to the same place you bought them and you can sometimes even accomplish this same day which is pretty convenient.

There are a few cons to buying glasses in-store too, however. The first of these is that the overall selection might be a little bit more limited. You don’t have a whole internet warehouse in front of you. Optical stores are still businesses after all and therefore, they still have the same profit motives as any other business. They might try to sell you an overly expensive pair of glasses.

On a similar note, the pricing can lack transparency. You might have to make a lot of decisions and choices before being told a price which can make comparison shopping longer and more tedious.

Conversely, one of the biggest pluses to online shopping is that prices are more readily transparent. Also, competition between these online retailers has resulted in prices being a lot more economical for the consumer. Generally, it’s much easier to comparison shop between online retailers as you just have to click through a couple of web pages rather than going store to store.

One of the biggest drawbacks to shopping online is that you won’t have any direct interaction with an optician or trained eyeglass fitter. So if your glasses happen to get broken, it may take longer to send them back and get them refitted.

Conclusion

Once you find a pair of glasses that are right for both your face shape and your skin tone, they’re going to suit your own individual personality and they will be a great fashion statement. As we said before, glasses are something to experiment with and we hope you’ll have fun with them.

Outfit Rundown

I’m wearing a vintage camel-hair jacket and a green shirt from Charles Tyrwhitt. The tie is silk and features a houndstooth pattern in pearl gray and bottle green. The cufflinks are gold-plated sterling silver, they’re an eagle claw design and they feature a tiger’s eye as the stone. Furthermore, the boutonniere is an edelweiss. I’m wearing an English silk pocket square. The green echoes green elsewhere in the outfit and its primary color which is burnt orange ties in with the various shades of brown that I’m wearing. My trousers are plain brown, my socks are green and feature a zig-zag pattern and my shoes are tan derbies which feature full broguing.

What type of eyeglasses do you plan to buy? If you wear them already, what kind are they? Share with us in the comments below.