High Fade vs Low Fade: Which Suits You?

The difference between a high fade vs low fade is simply where the blend starts. A high fade begins up around the temple, so by the time it is finished most of the side of your head is short. A low fade sits down in the bottom inch, barely over the ear, and leaves the bulk of your sides untouched. High makes a head look taller and narrower. Low keeps your proportions roughly as they are. If yours is a long face already, take the low one.

High fade vs low fade: where the line sits

Put two fingers flat above your ear. That band is where a low fade lives. The blend starts in that bottom inch or so and everything above it keeps its length, which is why a low fade reads as a tidy version of the hair you already had.

Now move your hand up to the corner of your forehead, where the hairline turns back towards your ear. A high fade starts around there. Most of the side goes short, and the contrast between the short sides and whatever is left on top is the whole effect.

A mid fade splits the difference and starts roughly halfway between the two. It is the height we reach for when a man has no strong feeling either way, and there are nineteen ways to wear one in our guide to the mid fade.

Worth separating two decisions that men tend to blur into one. Height is where the fade starts. Finish is how short the very bottom goes, skin or stubble, and that is a different question with a different answer, covered properly in skin fade vs taper fade. You can have a low skin fade or a high taper. Neither choice changes the price: both sit on our menu at £17 for 40 minutes, and nobody is charged extra for starting the blend higher up.

What each one does to your face

The eye reads a head by looking for width. Take hair off the sides and the head looks narrower, so the face above it looks longer. That single sentence is most of what you need.

A round or broad face gets on well with a high fade. Stripping the sides back removes the width that is making the face read as round, and if you keep a bit of height on top the whole head lengthens. It is what we usually end up cutting for a man who tells us his face is "too round for short hair".

A long, narrow or oblong face wants the opposite. A high fade takes away the only width you have and stretches the face further. Keep the fade low, leave some weight around the ears, and resist piling height on top as well, because the two stack.

A strong square jaw can carry either, and the decision is really about whether you want the jaw noticed. A high fade clears the sides right down to the jawline and puts it on display. A low fade softens the same jaw by leaving a little hair beside it.

A wide forehead narrowing to a small chin is the shape that needs the most thought. A high fade takes hair away exactly where you are already widest, at the temples, and does nothing for the chin. Low or mid keeps the top half in proportion.

None of this is a rule you have to obey. Plenty of men with long faces wear high fades on purpose because they like the severity of it. Just know what you are choosing rather than discovering it in the mirror afterwards.

Your hairline and your skull get a vote

Face shape is the question men ask. These are the ones that actually change our answer.

Receding corners. A high fade runs the blend straight into the temple, which on a lot of men is the exact patch that is thinning. You end up with a hard edge right next to a soft, retreating hairline, and the two make each other more obvious. We go into the reasoning properly in our post on cutting around a receding hairline, but the short version is to keep the fade under the temple and let a bit of length sit over the corner.

Ears that stand off the head. Hair around the ear hides a surprising amount. A high fade clears all of it away, a low fade leaves some. If you have spent your life aware of your ears, this matters more than your face shape does.

The back of your head. A high fade exposes a lot of skull, including the occipital bone, any flat spot, and whatever old scars are back there that you have honestly never laid eyes on. We can see all of it, and we will tell you while you are still deciding.

A whorl or double crown. The higher the fade climbs, the closer it gets to the crown, and hair that grows in a spiral will not lie flat against a short blend. It is workable, it just needs the top left long enough to cover the argument.

Growing out is where they really separate

Both fades are sharp on day one. Three weeks later they are different haircuts.

A low fade drifts. There is not much short hair to regrow, and because the transition was gentle to begin with, a week or two of growth just softens it. At four weeks it reads as a haircut a week past its date, and there is nothing much wrong with that.

A high fade does something less forgiving. Half your head is short, so there is far more area growing back at once, and the fade line creeps downwards as it does. What started clean at the temple ends up as a vague thickening somewhere around your ear, and the shape you paid for is gone rather than faded. A fortnight is realistic. Three weeks and you will know.

So be honest about your diary before you pick the height. A high fade is a commitment to being back in a chair every two weeks or so, and if that is not going to happen, the low fade will look better on the average Tuesday even if it looks less impressive on the day.

Getting the height you actually meant

"High" and "low" mean slightly different things to different barbers, which is why we would rather you point than name it. Put a finger on your own head where you want the blend to begin and the conversation is over in two seconds.

Photos help too, with one caveat. A fade that looks high in a picture is often a mid on a man with a different head shape, and a fair few men who come in asking for a high fade are pointing at a mid fade on someone with a rounder skull than theirs. We will tell you what the photo actually is before we cut it.

The last thing, and the one we would most like men to take away: go lower than you think on the first visit. Taking a fade higher next time takes five minutes with clippers. Putting height back on the sides takes about a month of looking like you regret something. If you are between two heights, book the lower one, live with it for a fortnight, and go up from there.