Measurement reference · FaceFluent editorial · September 13, 2026
Nose width to eye spacing
The width of the nose at the nostrils, divided by the gap between the inner corners of the eyes. The Renaissance canon holds that the two should be equal.
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Also called nasal-intercanthal ratio, alar width to intercanthal width, orbitonasal canon.
Reference range
None.
Historical drawing canons provide context for this proportion. We do not display a numerical target band or treat those canons as population norms.
How we calculate it
Distance between the left and right nostril-edge landmarks over the distance between the two inner eye-corner landmarks.
What moves the number
Smiling widens the nostrils. Head turn and lens distortion both affect nose width more than eye spacing, so the ratio drifts with how the photograph was taken.
What it cannot tell you
The historical equality is a drawing convention. When Farkas and colleagues measured 153 young adults against nine of these canons, this one held in roughly 40 per cent of them — the best result of the nine, and still a minority. It describes an ideal that most healthy faces do not meet.
References
- Farkas LG, Hreczko TA, Kolar JC. Vertical and horizontal proportions of the face in young adult North American Caucasians: revision of neoclassical canons. Plast Reconstr Surg, 1985.
- Al-Sebaei MO. The validity of three neo-classical facial canons in young adults originating from the Arabian Peninsula. Head Face Med, 2015 — a replication in a different population.
A Renaissance convention holds that the nose should be exactly as wide as the gap between the eyes. When somebody finally measured it, it held in a minority of people.
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