Pixie cut: see it on your face before the chop

The cut is built from a contrast between a very short back and sides and a longer top section. How short varies: some versions taper to skin at the nape, others keep a centimetre or two all round. The top is normally between four and eight centimetres, which is enough to push forward into a fringe, sweep to one side, or lift for volume.

Because so little hair remains, the shape of your skull is visible in a way it never is at longer lengths. A good stylist will cut to it — leaving more length over a flat spot at the back, taking more off where the head is already round. This is why a pixie that looks excellent on one person can sit oddly on another with the same face shape.

There is no hemline to hide behind, so the cut is either precise or it is not. Expect more time in the chair than a trim on long hair, and expect the stylist to check the outline from several angles rather than working from the front.

The common claim is that pixies need good cheekbones. What they actually need is a neck and jaw you are happy to show, because the cut removes everything that was covering them. Oval, heart and diamond faces are the easiest, since the width at the cheekbone already balances a short, close shape above it.

Fine hair does unusually well here. At four to six centimetres, fine hair stands up and holds a direction that it cannot manage at any longer length, so a pixie often looks thicker than the long hair it replaced. Thick hair also works but needs internal weight removal, otherwise the top section sits as a solid block rather than separating.

Hair that grows forward at the nape, or a strong crown whorl, changes the plan more than face shape does. A crown whorl in particular decides which way the top can be styled — fighting it daily is the single most common reason people give up on a pixie.

We built all 65 cuts in this library — 40on the women's reference model and 25on the men's — from 2 base photographs, one per model, rather than collecting 65 unrelated pictures. Every preview is an edit of that single base photo, so the face, skin texture, pose, clothing, background and lighting are identical across the whole library. The only variable is the hair.

Our method is deliberately constrained: the edit instruction forbids smoothing skin, slimming the face or changing the eyes, because a flattered “after” would make the comparison worthless. That is why the pixie cut above can be read against any other cut here — same person, same light. The before-and-after pairs come from one photograph for the same reason, and when you upload your own picture we use that same pipeline, not a different one.

For the fit advice we measure the same way our face shape detector does: 478 facial landmarksread in your browser with Google's MediaPipe Face Landmarker, then compared against 7 reference shapes on fixed ratios — a length-to-width ratio of 1.6 or more reads as oblong, under 1.3 reads round or square, and a jaw at 92% of cheekbone width or wider reads as square. Nothing is uploaded for that step; it runs on your device.

What this cannot tell you:how your own hair will behave once it is cut. Density, growth pattern, cowlicks and the stylist's hand all change the result, and no preview predicts them. Plenty of faces also sit within a percentage point or two of those thresholds, so a small change in head angle can move the reading — treat the fit advice as a shortlist, not a verdict, then take the shortlist to a salon.

Updated November 2026. We revise a cut's page when the advice or the renders change, not on a schedule.