LOOKSMETER · GUIDE
The Norwood scale, explained
The Norwood scale is how hair loss gets measured - and how it gets misjudged from bathroom mirrors daily. Here are all seven stages, the honest way to work out yours, and when a stage actually calls for action.
The seven stages
Each stage describes a recognisable pattern; real hairlines often sit between stages, which is why fractional reads like NW2.5 are common:
Norwood 1
Juvenile hairline. Low, straight line with filled temples. Common in teens, rare to keep through adulthood.
Norwood 2
Mature hairline. The whole line sits slightly higher with mild, even temple recession. Normal for adult men - not balding.
Norwood 3
The first balding stage: deep, bare, V-shaped temple recessions; the line reads M-shaped. NW3 Vertex adds a thinning crown to a NW3 front.
Norwood 4
Frontal recession deepens and crown loss grows, but a solid band of hair still separates the two areas.
Norwood 5
The separating band narrows and thins. Front and crown are still distinct, barely.
Norwood 6
The band is gone - frontal and crown loss merge into one bald area across the top.
Norwood 7
The final stage: only the horseshoe of hair at the sides and back remains.
Why self-assessment goes wrong
The three classic errors: mirror checks under a bathroom downlight (overhead light exaggerates scalp show-through and manufactures a crown problem), wet or pushed-back hair (reads one to two stages worse than dry, styled hair), and camera height (a phone held low hides recession; held high it invents crown thinning).
The fair method is the same boring rigour as any measurement: dry hair pulled off the forehead, camera at eye level, even light, one frontal and one top-down photo, repeated under identical conditions when you want to compare. A scored read with a confidence figure tells you when your photo wasn't good enough to trust - which is half of what makes it useful.
When a stage actually matters
A Norwood stage is a description, not a destiny. NW2 needs no response at all - it's the normal adult hairline. What deserves attention is change: movement between fixed-condition photos over months, active shedding, or a pattern that doesn't fit the scale (patchy or diffuse loss), all of which are reasons to see a dermatologist - early, because clinically proven options work best started early.
What a stage is genuinely useful for besides tracking: styling decisions. The cuts that flatter a NW2-3 are different from what works at NW5+, and fighting the pattern with styling almost always reads worse than working with it.
Frequently asked
What is the Norwood scale?
The Hamilton-Norwood scale is the standard classification of male-pattern hair loss, running from stage 1 (juvenile hairline, no recession) to stage 7 (a horseshoe of hair around the sides and back). It was developed from studies of thousands of men and is what dermatologists and hair-transplant surgeons use as shared vocabulary.
What Norwood stage is normal?
Norwood 1-2. Almost no adult man keeps a true juvenile NW1 hairline; settling into NW1.5-2 - a slight, even rise of the whole line - is normal maturation, not balding. NW3, with deep bare temple recession, is conventionally the first stage classified as balding.
How do I know my Norwood stage?
Photograph, don't mirror-check: hair pulled back off the forehead, camera at eye level, even indoor light, plus a separate top-down photo of the crown. Compare against stage descriptions - or use an automated read like our free hairline analyzer, which scores hairline, temples, crown, density and condition separately and reports how confidently it could read your photo.
What is Norwood 2 vs Norwood 3?
The most-asked boundary. NW2 is a mature hairline: the whole line sits slightly higher with mild, symmetric temple recession that doesn't look bare. NW3 is deeper: the temples show clearly bare, V-shaped recessions and the hairline reads M-shaped at conversational distance. If the temples are sparse but not bare, most raters call it NW2.5.
Does everyone progress through the Norwood stages?
No. Plenty of men hold NW2 for life; others move through stages over years or decades, at very different speeds. One photo tells you where you are, not where you're going - trajectory only shows up by comparing fixed-condition photos months apart, which is the honest reason to baseline now.
Is there a Norwood scale for women?
Female-pattern loss is classified on the Ludwig scale instead, because it typically presents as diffuse thinning behind an intact hairline rather than temple recession. If a Norwood-style read doesn't fit what you see, that's a signal the pattern needs a professional's eyes, not a better selfie.
Keep reading
This page is general information about facial aesthetics terminology, not medical or cosmetic advice. Scores from our tools are AI-generated estimates for entertainment and self-reflection.