Best Haircuts for Men With Square Faces

The best haircuts for men with square faces are short at the sides with some movement on top: a textured crop, a short quiff, a crew cut, or a longer scissor cut swept back. A square face is the one shape we almost never have to correct. The real decision is how much of your jaw you want people to notice, and that comes down to how high the sides go and how hard the edges are cut.

Square, oblong, or just a strong jaw

A square face is roughly as wide at the jaw as it is at the forehead and the cheekbones, with a flat line along the bottom and a clear corner where the jaw turns up towards the ear. Length and width come out close to even.

If it has all of that but is noticeably longer than it is wide, it is oblong, and that changes one thing. An oblong face does not want much height on top, because height stretches it further. A square face can take a fair bit before anything starts looking tall.

Plenty of men have a strong jaw on a face that is otherwise oval. That is the easiest face in the shop to cut for. Most of what follows still applies, you just have more room for error.

Stand square to a mirror with your hair pushed off your forehead. Look at where the width sits. If your forehead, cheekbones and jaw all line up, and the jaw has a proper corner rather than a curve, that is the face this post is about.

Show the jaw or soften it

Two ways to cut for a square face, and neither is wrong.

Leaning into it. The sides go short and high, the jaw is left out in the open, and the top stays short enough that nothing competes with it. It is a strong look, and slightly severe. On a man in his twenties with a sharp jawline it is about as good as short hair gets.

Taking the edge off. The fade sits lower, so a little hair stays beside the jaw and the corner reads less hard. The top is left longer and pushed back or to one side, so the eye goes up and across rather than straight to the bottom of the face. Men who feel their jaw makes them look stern, or who just want a gentler cut for work, tend to land here.

Fade height is the lever for both. We have gone through what a high fade does against a low one in more detail, but for a square face the summary is simple. Higher shows the jaw, lower softens it.

What we try to talk men out of is the middle ground done badly: a medium fade, a medium top, nothing in particular. A square face has a strong feature. Either use it or deliberately quieten it.

Four haircuts for a square face

Textured crop with a low or mid fade, £17 and 40 minutes. The one we would put on most square faces if we were choosing. The top is cut short and broken up with point cutting, and a textured crop has no straight edges anywhere on it. That is the whole point. Your jaw already supplies the straight lines, so the hair on top does not have to. Skip the fade and have the sides clippered short instead, and it is a plain Haircut at £15 and half an hour.

Short quiff over a taper, £17 and 40 minutes. Two to three inches on the top at the front, shorter towards the crown, blow dried up and back. It adds height, which a square face handles well, and the height is rounded rather than flat. It needs product and five minutes in the morning. If you will not do the five minutes, skip it, because a quiff left flat is just a long fringe.

Crew cut, £10 and 20 minutes. Short all round, with the front left fractionally longer than the rest. It leans into the jaw with no fuss and a square head suits it better than a round one. Ask for the front to be left slightly longer than the crown so it has a bit of shape. Clippered to one length all over it is closer to a buzz cut, which also works, but it is harder on a face that is already angular.

Longer scissor cut, swept back, £15 and 30 minutes. For the man who wants to soften it. Three or four inches on top, the sides kept tidy but not faded, everything combed back or to one side. The length breaks up the outline of the head so the jaw is not the only shape in the picture. It needs a trim every four to five weeks to keep the weight off the sides.

Where square turns into a box

A square face goes wrong when the haircut repeats the shape.

The classic version is a flat top: everything on top taken level, the corners at the front squared off, the sides straight down. On the right man it is a statement. On most square faces it puts a second square on top of the first, and the head ends up looking like it was built rather than grown.

Smaller versions of the same thing are more common, and men ask for them without realising.

• A hard line-up at the temples with sharp corners. It adds right angles at the top of the forehead to match the ones at the jaw.
• A squared neckline on top of all that. On its own it is fine. As a third hard edge it tips the cut into looking boxy.
• Heavy grown-out sides that stop level with the jaw. The weight sits exactly where the face is already widest at the bottom.

None of these are forbidden. Pick one hard edge and keep it. A sharp line-up with a soft textured top and a natural neckline looks deliberate. The same line-up with a flat top and a squared back looks like a box with hair on it.

Beards on a square face

A beard moves the bottom edge of the face, so on a square jaw it matters as much as the cut.

Heavy stubble or a short beard kept close follows the jaw you already have and does not change much. A full beard grown boxy, squared at the chin and straight along the cheek, doubles the corner. If you want it longer, have it shaped rounder at the chin and kept tighter at the corners of the jaw, which takes the angle out of it. On its own the trim is £11 for fifteen minutes. Add it to a haircut and the pair bills £24.

Before the clippers come out

Work out which of the two looks you are after before you sit down. "I want my jaw to stand out" and "I want it softer" send the cut in different directions from the first pass of the clippers, and it is much easier to hear that at the start than to try to add hair back afterwards.

Then give us the fade height, the length on top, and which one edge you want kept sharp. "Mid fade, a couple of inches on top, textured, natural neckline" is a whole brief.

Still undecided? That is exactly what the look in the mirror before the cut is for. Sit down, push your hair back, and we will say what we see. Most square faces could go either way, and we will say so rather than pick for you. When you know, book the chair and ask for the same barber next time so you do not have to explain it twice.