What Would I Look Like Bald? See Your Head Shape First

Maybe the clippers are already out. Maybe there's a bit more scalp in the bathroom mirror every year, and you want to know where that road ends. Either way, you'd like to see it before you commit.

You can. A straight-on photo and an AI photo editor will show you a believable bald version of yourself in about a minute. Your face comes through well. The top of your head is the part to take with a pinch of salt, because the AI has never seen it either.

What a bald preview really shows

Hair sets the outline. You can't see the head underneath.

What your hair has been hiding

Hair is a frame. It sets the outline of your head, softens your forehead and covers your ears. Shave it and three things take over: the shape of your skull, your hairline (or where it used to be) and your ears.

That's what a bald preview really shows you. Your eyes, nose and smile don't change. They just sit under a bare dome instead of a frame of hair, and that changes how the whole face reads.

Same haircut, three different heads

With hair, all three look the same from the front.

It's also why no preview can be perfect. If your hair is thick, the AI has to guess what's under it, just as you can't tell those three heads apart by the haircut. The thinner or shorter your hair already is, the less there is to guess.

A man with thick wavy brown hair and stubble, then an AI buzz cut preview of him, then an AI bald preview — One of our test faces (AI-generated, so nobody had to shave). His thick waves hid everything above the forehead, so the scalp in both previews is the AI's best guess.

How to get a preview worth trusting

Take a plain photo. Face the camera at eye level, in daylight, in front of a plain wall. Keep your head straight, not tilted.

Get your hair out of the way. Push it back off your forehead and tuck it behind your ears. Anything the AI can see, it doesn't have to invent. Ears hidden under hair came back made up every time we tried.

Ask for more than “make me bald”. That short request gave a clean result on just 2 of our 8 test faces. Saying what to keep worked on 6 of 8:

“Shave this person's head completely bald with a smooth, natural scalp. Keep their face, ears, head shape, expression, skin tone, lighting, clothing and background exactly the same.”

If your hair is past your shoulders, add: “Remove all of their hair, including the long hair behind the neck and over the shoulders.” Without it, you can end up bald on top with long hair still hanging down the back.

Run it two or three times. If the top of your head changes shape from one try to the next, that part is a guess. Don't read much into the exact outline.

See yourself bald

Our AI image editor needs a free account. Add your photo, paste the request and run it a couple of times.

Open the AI editor

Where a bald preview can fool you

Most previews look convincing at a glance. Here's where ours went wrong, so you know where to look.

The dome is a best guess

Same photo, same request, two tries, two different heads. Neither is “his” head, because the photo never showed it.

Two AI bald previews made from the same photo of the same man: the first has a tall crown with a ridge across the top, the second a lower, smoother crown — Try 1 has a ridge across the top. Try 2 is smoother and sits lower.

Long hair can hang around

With our main request, both long-haired test faces came back bald on top with the rest still hanging behind the shoulders, in all six tries. Adding the long-hair sentence above fixed it every time.

A woman with long wavy dark hair, then an AI bald preview where the top of her head is shaved but long hair still hangs past her shoulders

Two more things to check

Cover the scalp with your thumb and compare the eyes, nose and mouth to your photo. On that same long-haired face, her features shifted enough that she looked less like herself; another try fixes that.

And a front photo can't show the back of your head. Press your hair flat with both hands and check a side view in the mirror. It tells you more about a flat back or a bump than any preview.

Try a buzz cut first

A buzz cut is the honest middle step. It follows your skull, so you see your real head shape and hairline, and it grows back quickly if you hate it. Wahl, the clipper maker, calls a #2 guard (a quarter inch) the traditional buzz cut.

Clipper guards, longest to shortest

1/2 inch, 13 mm

Crew cut territory. Still soft at the edges.

Start with a longer guard and work down. You can always take more off the same evening, and every step shows you a little more of your head.

If you preview a buzz cut with AI first, watch your hairline. Our buzz previews liked to make people look younger: gray hair came back dark, and one receding hairline was quietly filled back in.

A man with a receding hairline and gray temples; an AI buzz cut with his hairline moved down and filled in; an AI buzz cut that keeps the receding corners but turns the gray dark — The plain request gave him a full hairline he doesn't have. Asking to keep it got the corners right, though the gray still went dark.

So add this to your buzz request:

“Keep the hairline exactly where it is, including the corners at the temples, and keep the natural hair color, including the gray.”

Beard or no beard?

With nothing on top, a beard is the biggest change you can still make. It lengthens the face and pulls attention down from the scalp.

Same bald head, three beards

Clean-shaven, the bare dome is the biggest thing in the picture.

The research is thin but interesting. In one study, men with their hair digitally removed were rated more dominant, about four years older and a bit less attractive. In a second part of the same study, people rated a man described as shaved as more confident than the same man described as thinning. Beards push the same way: another study found they made men look older and higher in status, but women didn't rate them as more attractive.

Nobody has tested the bald-plus-beard combination, so your own preview is the best evidence you'll get. Our free beard generator works on a bald preview without an account; free results carry our watermark, and clean downloads are on paid plans.

The same AI bald preview of a man three ways: clean-shaven, with stubble, and with a full gray-flecked beard — Type the color along with the style, like “full thick black beard”. With no hair on top to match, one of our dark-haired test faces got a ginger beard when we left the color out.

If you're losing your hair to treatment

Many people cut their hair short first, and some shave it before it starts to fall out, says Macmillan Cancer Support. A preview is a private way to see your face without hair before it happens.

Quick questions

Are bald filters accurate?

They're good at your face and skin, and they guess at whatever your hair covers. If your hair is short or thinning, there's little to guess. If it's thick or long, the shape of the top of your head and your ears are made up, and two tries of the same photo can give you two different heads.

Should I get a buzz cut before shaving my head?

If you're unsure, yes. A #2 buzz (about a quarter inch) shows your real head shape and hairline, and you can still go shorter the same day. Start with a longer guard and work down.

Will shaving my head make me look older?

A little, on average. In one study, men with their hair digitally removed were judged almost four years older than the same men with hair. They were also rated more dominant and slightly less attractive.