Round Face Shape: Best & Worst Beards for it (Complete Guide) (2024)

The weakness of a round face shape is the lack of height at the forehead and jaw area, which when combined with wide cheekbones, makes your face look like a bowling ball.

If your jawline and facial features also lack angularity, then this will only accentuate the roundness and give you a really boyish-looking face (it sucks, but luckily there’s a lot you can do to improve this).

Other articles in this series:

• Beard Styles for Triangle Face Shape
• Beard Styles for Oval Face Shape
• Beard Styles for Oblong Face Shape
• Beard Styles for Diamond Face Shape
• Beard Styles for Square Face Shape
• Beard Styles for Heart Face Shape

When choosing the right beard style for your face shape, round faced men should always start from styles that add length (but never width) to the face.

The round face shape is not the most attractive of face shapes to own, in fact, it’s the least visually pleasing according to some experts. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything to make it appear more longer and oval shaped (which is considered to be the ideal shape).

There are three main ways to add length and definition to your round face: The hair, the beard, and glasses.

Out of all the three, growing a right beard style that balances your round face shape is the one with the biggest impact, and if you want to learn just how exactly can you choose the right beard style for the round face, then keep reading below to get all the details.

What is a Round Face Shape

The round face shape is characterized by its round (duh) and short features. While all the other face shapes tend to be significantly taller than they are wide, the round face shape has equal or close to equal horizontal and vertical length.

Men with round shaped faces also typically have similar widths at the forehead, cheekbones, and at the outermost edges of the jawline (the mandible).

While there are other face shapes that are short as well (like the square and heart shape), the main divider between them and the round face shape is the fact that the round face has soft features with no sharp angles.

It’s also worth noting that being overweight will make your face appear much rounder than it would be if you were lighter.

This is because fat has a tendency to accumulate in the cheek and jaw area, adding width to your face, but as it won’t add any length, your face shape will get increasingly rounder as the number on the scale creep upwards.

(Coincidentally, you can also use a beard to hide a double chin, weak jawline, etc).

Some popular guys with a round shaped face include: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Black, Elijah Wood, Zach Efron, Zack Galinafkis, and Jeremy Renner.

Bottom line: The round face shape is often as tall as it’s wide, with soft round features and no sharp angles. The widths of the forehead, cheekbones, and jaw are equal or very close to each other.

How to Know if you Have a Round Shaped Face

Ultimately the only proper way to really know if you have a round shaped face or not is to take out the measuring tape and measure it out yourself.

The measurements you need to take are one from the lowest part of your chin to the edge your hairline (face height), one from the forehead (from the edges of the temples), one from your cheekbones (the outermost edges under your eyes), and one from your jawline (the widest parts under your ears, called the mandible).

If it sounds confusing, here’s a picture so you can see where to measure from:

You have a round shaped face if:

• The height is equal or close to the width of your jaw, cheekbones, or forehead.
• The widths of the forehead, cheekbones, and jaw are equal or close to each other.
• Your jawline and other face features are soft and not defined/angular.

What Kind of Beard Compliments a Round Face

When choosing the best round face shape beard styles, you need find a style that puts emphasis to the jaw and chin, without adding any more width to the sides of your face.

The beard style should also have enough length at the bottom part so that it creates a visual impression of a longer face, and shifts your face shape into appearing more oval than round.

Faded beard styles are also a good fit for round faced men, as those start from very short lengths at the upper sideburns and gradually increase in length as you go lower and lower on the cheeks. This adds length to your face and helps draws the attention away from the roundness.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with long beard styles if you have a round face shape. The more length you add, the less round and more oval your face will appear – as long as the sides are kept short at all times.

In other words: Choose a beard style that accentuates the chin, the jawline, and the length of the face, but has short or even completely shaved sides to avoid adding any more width to the already round face shape.

What Kind of Beard Poorly Fits the Round Face

Beard styles that do not go well with the round face shape are most types of stubble (light, medium, heavy), very short beard styles, and those that add any width to your face.

Why?

Well, if you have a round shaped face then you want to distinguish the roundness and accentuate the chin and jaw.

Does growing a stubble do any of that? No.

And what about beard styles that have long sideburns area? Well they’re practically speaking a disaster for round faced men, as those will only accentuate the roundness and make your head look like a bowling ball.

It’s also good to keep in mind that no matter what shape your face is, your facial hair will look bad if you let your beard grow scraggly and unkempt.

There’s nothing quite as visually unappealing as a beard that looks like pubic hair, and if that’s the case, then you can be sure that nobody really cares what shape your face is underneath.

Best Beard Styles for Round Face Shape

The Hollywoodian

The Hollywoodian beard style is like a full beard, but with shaved sideburns and a cheek line that has been lowered by roughly 1″ from where it normally would be.

It’s the perfect beard style for a round shaped face as it adds no width at all, but greatly helps in accentuating the chin and jawline, all while making your face appear taller and more oval shaped.

This is the go-to beard style of Leonardo DiCaprio, and I’m pretty sure one of his stylists at some point has to have recommended it to him to balance out DiCaprio’s round face features.

This beard style will take your roughly two months to grow out, and it has a length of 1-2 inches (2.5-5 cm). For more information read our full guide to growing and trimming the Hollywoodian beard style.

The Ducktail Beard

Whenever you need a beard style that will accentuate the jaw and chin and make your face look more defined and angular, then the Ducktail is a great choice.

The Ducktail beard is a long full face beard style that features short sides, full mustache that connects with the beard, and a big bold jawline that tapers down towards a pointy chin.

Obviously, a beard style like this is great choice for a round head, as it balances out the roundness with its short sides, long chin, and defined jawline.

The name comes from the chin part which resembles duck’s tail. And as impressive as this beard style looks like, it will take some serious time to grow out (four months and upwards).

The Ducktail has a length of two to four inches, and it’s recommended that you get it trimmed and shaped by a professional barber (at least for the first time) to avoid messing up your beard.

You can read more about this beard style in our full guide to growing and shaping a Ducktail beard.

The Classic Full Beard

Nothing beats a classic they say, and the regular full beard is great example of that.

It bodes well with pretty much any face shape, and if you have what it takes to grow one, then you can be sure that it will work wonders for your round head.

As long as you keep the sides short, a full beard will accentuate the jawline and make your face appear longer, which in turn makes your face shape more oval than round.

Full beards come in all shapes and sizes, but typically they are somewhere around 1-4 inches in length and minimally shaped so that the sides are short and the jawline has a nice natural shape.

You can read more in our guide to growing and trimming a full beard.

The Garibaldi Beard

The Garibaldi beard style gets its name from the Italian general, Giuseppe Garibaldi, who had a full face beard with wide rounded bottom part.

And that’s precisely what a modern day Garibaldi beard looks like as well. It features a minimally trimmed full face beard with short sides and a big long and wide bottom part under the jawline that really adds some crazy definition and length to your jawline.

The Garibaldi beard is a great choice for round faced men – even though it adds width to the bottom of your jaw.

Why though, wasn’t the golden rule not to add any width to an already round face shape?

Yes, yes. But the width is at the very bottom of the beard, not at your cheekbone area, so it doesn’t actually make your face appear more rounder.

In addition to that, the Garibaldi is such a long beard style that it will transform your round shaped face all the way into the oblong face shape territory.

The Garibaldi beard has a length of 2-8 inches and it will take you roughly four months or more to grow out. If your face is round, I recommend that you aim for the longer versions of the Garibaldi straight away.

For more information about this beard style, check out our guide to trimming and growing a Garibaldi beard style.

Goatee

Goatee beard styles can be a good fit for the round face shape, as long as you let the chin grow out a bit and maybe even shape it into a point (to add extra length to your face).

If you can’t grow a beard on your cheeks that well, then goatee is of course, the obvious choice, as some beard is always better than no beard.

Even though a goatee may look like a small and moderate beard style, it can still nicely accentuate the chin and help make your face less round.

A well shaped goatee also adds a little step to the jawline, which helps mask the roundness and add some angularity.

Goatees come in all sizes and shapes, which is why I recommend you to read through our full guide on maintaining a goatee beard.

Van Dyke

The Van Dyke beard style gets its name from Antohony Van Dyck, a 17th century flemish painter who sported a pointed chin beard with a mustache that does not connect with the beard below.

And that’s what the modern day Van Dyke looks as well, a 1-2″ pointed chin beard, and a nicely shaped mustache that is often styled to the sides.

Is it a great choice of facial hair for men with round shaped face?

You bet.

The Van Dyke will make your chin appear longer and more defined, and the mustache will frame the face and take some attention away from the round jawline.

Since the sides and cheeks are completely shaved, this beard style adds no width to your already round face, which is always a plus.

The Balbo Beard

The Balbo beard is named after a politician called Italo Balbo.

It’s very similar to the Hollywoodian beard style, as it too features shaved sides, facial hair on the chin and running alongside the jawline all the way to the connection point under the earlobes (mandible), and even the cheekline has been shaved down 1-2″ from where it would naturally be.

The only real difference between the Balbo and the Hollywoodian is the fact that the beard does not connect with the mustache, instead there’s a noticeable 1/2 to 1/4 inch gap on both sides of the mouth.

Is this a good beard style for a round face shape?

Yes, of course.

Just like with the Hollywoodian, the Balbo style adds length to your face, takes attention away from the roundness, and makes your face more of an oval shape. Thanks to the short sides it also adds no width.

A typical balbo beard has a length of 1-2″, but if you have a round shaped face then growing it longer than that will not be a problem, it will only further help reduce the roundness of your face.

Conclusion

To find the perfect beard style for a round face shape, look for facial hair styles that feature short sides and lengthy chin.

This helps to add length to your already short face and shifts your face shape from round into oval.

Men with round faces should avoid short beard styles and stubble, as these do nothing to accentuate the weak areas and they won’t take any attention away from the roundness.

It’s also important that you do not choose a style that increases your face width, as this would make your head look like a bowling ball.

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