How to Find Your Visual Weight: A Guide to Understanding Your Unique Features

When it comes to personal style, understanding your visual weight is just as important as knowing your body type or your best colors. But what exactly is visual weight, and how can it help you enhance your look? In this post, we’ll dive into what visual weight is, what influences it, and how you can determine yours using two simple methods.

What Is Visual Weight?

Visual weight refers to the overall impact your facial features have in creating an impression. It’s not about actual weight but rather the visual balance and proportion of your features. People with higher visual weight typically have more prominent, larger, or sharper features, while those with lower visual weight have softer, smaller, or more delicate features.

Understanding your visual weight can help you choose hairstyles, makeup, and even clothing styles that enhance your natural beauty. It’s all about working with your unique features rather than against them.

Main Aspects Influencing Visual Weight

Several factors contribute to your visual weight, including:

1. Facial Features Volume: Larger or more prominent features, such as full lips or a strong jawline, increase visual weight, while smaller, more delicate features decrease it.

   
   

2. Size of Features Compared to Face: If your features take up more space on your face (e.g., large eyes or a broad nose), you have higher visual weight. Smaller features in proportion to your face lower it.

   
   

3. Feature Placement (Close Set vs. Wide Set): Features that are closer together generally attract more attention to the area they're concentrated in and contribute to a higher visual weight, while wider-set features lower it.

   
   

4. Color Intensity and Contrast: High contrast between your skin, hair, and eye color, as well as more intense feature coloring, contribute to higher visual weight. Lower contrast and softer coloring result in lower visual weight. This is one of the easiest characteristics to change with makeup, so keep that in mind if you ever wish to adjust your visual perception and presentation!

   
   

5. Bone Structure Prominence: A more angular or prominent bone structure adds to visual weight, while a softer, less defined bone structure reduces it.

How to Evaluate Your Visual Weight

There are a couple of methods you can use to evaluate your visual weight at home. Here’s how:

Method 1: The Dear Peachie Question Set

The Dear Peachie YouTube channel offers a simple set of questions to help you assess your visual weight. Here’s how it works:

1. Eyes: Do you have smaller or bigger eyes?

• Smaller: Lower visual weight

• Bigger: Higher visual weight

2. Nose: Is your nose less or more prominent (does it have lower or higher vertical projection)?

• Less prominent: Lower visual weight

• More prominent: Higher visual weight

3. Bone Structure: Is your bone structure less or more angular?

• Less angular: Lower visual weight

• More angular: Higher visual weight

4. Feature Placement: Are your features further apart or closer together?

• Further apart: Lower visual weight

• Closer together: Higher visual weight

If you answered the first option for most of these questions, you likely have a lower visual weight. If you picked the second option for most, your visual weight is likely higher.

Method 2: Greyscale Selfie Analysis

Another way to assess your visual weight is through a greyscale selfie analysis:

1. Take a selfie in natural lighting.

2. Convert the selfie to greyscale.

3. Adjust the contrast slider all the way down to -100, save this version.

4. Adjust the contrast slider all the way up to +100, and save this version too.

(Yes, the first part of this process is the same of one of the ways to assess value in my seasonal color analysis article: I told you it would come back again!)

Now, compare both images.

• If the low contrast version (the one at -100) looks better, more harmonious, and closer to how you perceive yourself, your visual weight is lower.

• If the high contrast version (the one at +100) looks better and enhances your features, your visual weight is higher.

  
  

An example of the application of the two different contrast settings on an old picture of mine: as you can see, I place on the lower half of the visual weight spectrum

Visual Weight Is a Spectrum

Remember, visual weight is a spectrum. Very few people fit perfectly into one archetype or another. Your unique blend of features is what makes you, well, you! Whether your visual weight is higher or lower, there are countless ways to highlight your natural beauty.

Stay tuned for more articles on how to flatter your features with hairstyles, makeup, and more, tailored specifically to different visual weights. Understanding your visual weight is just the first step to discovering your best self!