Why men's brows are drawn a little thicker

What the extra width does to the face

I'm Jisun, the owner of London Brow in Seoul. The brow is the strongest horizontal line on a man's face, and its width sets where the attention goes. A thin brow lifts the eye toward the forehead and leaves the eyes looking exposed. A slightly wider brow anchors them. That is why one of the rules I follow for men's brows is to draw them a little thicker than a woman's, by about one to two millimeters. The number comes from how I work, not from a measurement I promise, and it changes with the face in front of me.

The easiest way to see the effect is to look at your own brows in a mirror and cover the lower edge of one with the side of a pencil, making it narrower. The face on that side looks more alert and more styled at once. Take the pencil away and it settles. Width is calm.

Where the width goes

The extra width does not go at the front. The front of a man's brow starts with the hairs he has, pointing upward, and a wide front looks like a block. The width sits in the body of the brow and grows slightly toward the tail, so that the brow is a touch heavier at the back than at the arch. That is the opposite of a woman's brow, which usually tapers to a fine point. The two lines that make the width behave differently: the upper line runs straight from the arch to the tail, and the lower line keeps a very slight curve. The width is simply the distance between them.

Thicker is not darker

This is where most men's brows go wrong. Width and darkness are separate decisions, and a wide brow only looks heavy when it is also dark. The color I start from for men is lighter than any reference photo, as a rule, and the strokes are placed among your own hairs rather than filled solid. A wider brow in a light tone reads as a man who simply has good brows. A wider brow in a dark tone reads as makeup. If the reference you like is a dense, dark brow, I take the width from it and leave the color behind.

How to check your own width

In daylight, look at the width of your brow at its fullest point, usually just before the arch, and then at the tail. Most natural brows narrow toward the end because the hairs are shorter there. Then look at the front. If the front is the widest part, the brow will read heavy no matter how light the color is, and the design will move the weight back. Take a straight-on photo with the hairs unbrushed so I can see the same thing. I do not apply the one to two millimeters mechanically; I draw it on and we look.

In the consultation

Consultations at London Brow are translation-assisted over WhatsApp, so ask it plainly: 'How much wider than my own brow is the sketch, and where does the width go?' In the room I draw the line on your brow and you compare it with your hair in the mirror at the front, the arch and the tail. If the width at any point looks like more than you want, say so before anything is fixed. The rule gives a starting point, and the mirror decides.

Common questions