or drag a photo onto this box
Front-on, even light, hair as you normally wear it - no hat. Your photo is analysed on your own device and never uploaded.
Rather not use a photo?
- Measured geometry, not a lookalike guess
- Crown covered by two questions a photo can't answer
- Photo stays on your device, always
What the Norwood-Hamilton scale actually is
The scale is the standard map of male pattern baldness. Dr James Hamilton built the first version in 1951 from observations of hundreds of men; Dr O'Tar Norwood revised and extended it in 1975 into the seven-stage form used today — which is why it answers to Norwood, Hamilton, or both names joined.
Its job is shared language. "I'm thinning a bit" means nothing between two people; "Norwood 3 vertex" means the same thing to you, a pharmacist, a telehealth doctor and a surgeon in Istanbul. Stage is what decides which treatments have something to offer, what a transplant would cost, and which haircuts work — which makes knowing yours the first practical step of every path, including the path of doing nothing and checking again next year.
One thing the scale is not: a verdict about the future. It describes position, not speed. Two men at stage 2 can be a lifetime stable and eighteen months from stage 4 respectively — which is why trajectory, usually established with one photo a year, matters more than any single reading.
The stages of hair loss, 1 to 7
Norwood 1
No meaningful recession. The hairline may have settled back a touch from its teenage position — that's maturing, not balding — and the crown is full.
Norwood 2 →
Slight, symmetrical recession at the temples. Often just a mature hairline — most men here never progress further.
Norwood 3 →
Deep temple recession forming a clear M. The first stage classified as true balding — and the best treatment window.
Norwood 4 →
Deep frontal recession and a sparse crown, still separated by a solid band of hair across the top.
Norwood 5 →
Front and crown loss have grown toward each other; the band between them is narrow and thinning through.
Norwood 6 →
The bridge is gone: front and crown are one bald area, with loss beginning to walk down the sides.
Norwood 7 →
The scale's end point: only a low horseshoe above the ears and around the back remains, often finer than it once was.
The lettered variants you'll meet in the wild: an "A" suffix (2A, 3A…) marks patterns that recede front-first without a separate crown spot, and "3 vertex" marks a stage-3 front paired with a crown patch — it gets a full treatment on the Norwood 3 page.
Placing yourself without the tool
The manual method is three checks, and they are exactly the three measurements the tool automates:
- Temple depth. Push your hair back in even light and compare the corners to the centre of your hairline. Corners level with the centre: stage 1. Stepped back a little, symmetrically: stage 2. Cut well behind it into a definite M: stage 3 or beyond.
- The crown. Phone camera, arm raised above and behind — you cannot see your own crown honestly any other way. Full coverage, a thin patch, or a defined spot moves the reading between the plain stages and the vertex track.
- The band. If both front and crown are involved, the strip of hair between them is the referee: solid means stage 4, thinning means 5, gone means 6.
The two readings people get wrong
A maturing hairline read as balding. Nearly every man's hairline lifts away from its teenage position in his twenties and then parks — a normal, non-balding shift that looks exactly like early recession in the mirror. Shape, pace and the crown separate the two; the maturing-or-receding guide walks through all three checks.
3 vertex read as 4. Both have a receded front and a crown patch. The difference — how deep the front has gone, and whether the two zones are expanding toward each other — changes what treatment can still do, which is why the stage 3 and stage 4 pages each carry the comparison from their own side.
Why the stage number is worth knowing
Because every decision downstream keys off it. Treatment holds hair far better than it regrows it, so the value of acting falls with every stage climbed — the difference between reading this at stage 2 and stage 5 is most of your hair. Transplant maths scales with stage too: graft counts and prices roughly triple across the scale, which the cost calculator makes concrete. And the styling playbook flips by stage — from "almost anything works" through the buzz-cut zone to the shave decision. Stage first; everything else follows.
FAQ
The Norwood scale, asked directly
- What is the Norwood scale?
- A seven-stage classification of male pattern hair loss, from a full juvenile hairline (stage 1) to the final horseshoe (stage 7). It was introduced by Dr James Hamilton in 1951 and revised by Dr O'Tar Norwood in 1975, which is why you'll also see it called the Norwood-Hamilton scale. Clinics, pharmacists and researchers all use it as shorthand for how far a pattern has progressed.
- What Norwood am I?
- The tool on this page answers that in about a minute: it measures your temple recession against the centre of your hairline from a photo, then asks about the crown and the band between - the two things a front photo can't see. If you'd rather not use a photo, the same staging logic runs from three questions.
- Is the Norwood scale used for women?
- No - female pattern loss thins diffusely along the parting rather than retreating at the temples and crown, so it has its own classification, the Ludwig scale. A woman comparing herself to Norwood stages will mis-stage almost every time.
- How accurate is a photo measurement?
- The tool measures real geometry - how far your temples sit behind the centre of your hairline, in proportion to your face - which is exactly what the scale's frontal stages describe. It stages the front from measurement and the crown from your answers, tells you when you sit near a boundary, and refuses to guess when it can't read a hairline (hats and shaved heads defeat any photo tool that's being honest).
- Does stage decide what treatment can do?
- Largely, yes - and that's the reason to know yours. Early stages are where holding your hair is cheap and effective; middle stages are where transplant maths gets serious; late stages are where regrowth products have nothing to offer and the honest options are surgery, SMP or the shave. Each stage page spells its version out.
How the measurement works — columns, thresholds and refusal rules — is documented on the methodology page. Cosmetic self-assessment, not a diagnosis; sudden, patchy or symptomatic hair loss is a doctor's appointment, not a scale question.