Makeup
06 August 2024
If you’re wondering why certain makeup styles or hairstyles don’t compliment you the way you thought they should, you might need to try out TikTok’s newest guide to understanding your visual weight. Just like seasonal colour analysis filters, AI filters on TikTok helped us decipher our best colours for personal styling, knowing whether you’re a high or low visual weight can help you to enhance your makeup and personal styles.
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Here’s a guide to understanding how knowing your visual weight can be useful in enhancing your personal makeup and aesthetic styles! I would love to hear your take on visual weight facial analysis and if you think it’s helped (or not?) your personal styling. Let me know in the comments below.
The visual weight facial analysis is based on the facial distribution, projection proportion of facial features; which influences the perception of a person’s appearance; and its effects on makeup and styling.
The concept of visual weights has its roots in photography for the composition of elements. Objects with high visual weights (or visual mass) draw the viewer’s attention more strongly and vice versa. Borrowing on these concepts, #BeautyTok distinguishes high VS low visual weight faces based on whether a person’s facial features appear more prominent (high visual weight) or softer (low visual weight). In reality, most of us will fall somewhere along the spectrum rather than face a true dichotomy.
Despite its name, visual weight is not a measure of the size of the face; but more of a subjective impression of the overall facial appearance. The intention is to guide makeup styles to enhance one’s appearance, just like complementary colour palettes.
According to the school of TikTok, these determine whether the visual weight is high or low: the shape and projection of your facial bones, prominence of your facial features, proportion of your facial features.
A person with prominent facial bone structure and larger facial features that occupy a greater proportion of the face are considered to have a high visual weight, because viewers are visually drawn to their facial features. Conversely, low visual weight faces are characterised by having softer and smaller facial features. The visual attention to the face is more diffuse, and not zoned into specific facial features.
Celebrities with high visual weights include Lisa from Blackpink, Zendaya, Kylie Jenner, Dua Lipa. You’ll notice that these celebrities have strong facial bone structure, large eyes and lips; and their facial features occupy a large proportion of their faces. These celebrities pull bold makeup styles and vibrant colours very well.
Taylor Swift, IU, Jennie, Jisoo, Suzy Bae, Kim Ji Won are examples of celebrities with low visual weight. Their facial bone structures are less angular, and their facial features are smaller and less defining than their counterparts with high visual weights. These celebrities look very good in natural looking, clean girl makeup styles.
To take the guesswork out of assessing your bone structure and facial features, TikTok content creators have shared 2 tips to help you determine your visual weight:
1. Photo Test
Take a photograph of your face; and apply a black and white filter. Next, change the contrast settings of the same photo to both extremes of negative 100 and positive 100. If your features appear clearer at negative 100 contrast, you likely have a low visual weight. However, if they stand out more at 100 percent contrast, it indicates a high visual weight. I am not convinced by this as increasing the contrast of any black and white photo would make features more obvious.
2. Visual weights filter Another method of assessing your visual weight involves enlisting the help of TikTok’s Visual Weights filter. The Visual Weights filter splits your face into makeup for “Low” and “High” Visual Weights and you can decide which style is more flattering for you. This is highly subjective, of course.
All this work to determine your visual weight can help you to choose makeup styles and products that flatter you. The consensus on TikTok is that people with higher visual weights can pull off stronger colours, bolder colours and higher contrasts to accentuate their facial features, while those with lower visual weights look better in softer colours and more natural makeup looks.
For high visual weight faces, makeup artist Holly Harnwell recommends enhancing their strong facial features, for example with thick winged liner or a bright lip, but not both. She recommends choosing either the eyes or the lips as the focal point, but not both to avoid overwhelming the makeup look.
For those with low visual weight, Harnwell recommends more natural make-up looks such as clean girl makeup looks and softer colours like a pink or peachy blush and nude lip. Instead of black colour, she suggests browns; and natural looking lashes over full glam lashes.
My critique of the assessment is that it’s prone to biases- afterall, how a person perceives how they appear with the Bold Glamour filter is subjective. The lighting and pose of the subject can also influence how a photo looks. Some people also cannot be clearly categorised as high versus low visual weights; and they are somewhere along the spectrum of visual weights. Also as our faces change with age, the visual weight will also change! I’m also certain that with the right makeup application techniques, we’ll also find low and high visual weight faces looking great in both clean and dramatic makeup styles.
This distinction of visual weights does not have to be used as a rule book; but it is certainly helpful because choosing the right or makeup style can enhance your facial features or make you look older. I found that taking a makeup class from a professional makeup artist, Rachel Ong, helped me achieve an clean, every day makeup look for work so that took the guesswork out of figuring my personal visual weight, but understanding this trend was a fun process, and I hope you enjoyed this.
