How to Get a "Better" Jawline, According to Experts

May 2024 · 7 minute read

Spoiler alert: Your neck and jawline — just like every other area of your body — age. It's completely normal and natural. And yet, more and more people are seeking out a contoured chin and well-defined jawline, board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. David Sieber, tells us. Los Angeles-based board-certified dermatologist Dr. Sameer Bashey credits our new digital lifestyle, and by extension, the unavoidable full-screen views of our neck and faces, with a renewed focus on jaw treatments.

"People are more conscious now of their facial anatomy because they are seeing themselves on camera ... a lot more," he explains. A majority of these patients all ask for the same thing: a sharper jawline, he adds. So if you're looking to tone and tighten this body part, we've got you covered. From at-home, non-invasive treatments to professional in-office procedures, we tapped a slew of experts for the best options available when it comes to sculpting your jawline.

At-Home Tools

Facial Massager

If a tool is more your style, celebrity facialist Joanna Czech, renowned for her crazy-effective and impossibly slimming massages, developed an at-home facial sculpting massager to do all the heavy lifting for you and it couldn't be easier to use. Simply roll it from the center of the chin to your earlobe. And real talk: a facial massage works wonders for a puffy-face hangover or salty late-night feast.

Toning Device

Another option — and one of the most popular at-home tech tools — is the NuFACE Facial Toning Device. It works to stimulate your face, jaw, and neck by using microcurrent technology to improve the jawline contour and tighten skin tone and fine lines.

Pro tip: According to Raquel Medina-Cleghorn, lead esthetician at Joanna Czech, most people apply serums and moisturizers incorrectly — tugging the skin downward, jaw to collarbone — which can accelerate creasing of the skin. But what they really should be doing is applying products in an upward sweeping motion, collarbone to jaw. To really amp up the results, give yourself a lymphatic drainage massage — kneading and pinching the jawline upward toward your ear — as you apply your serum.

At-Home Radio Frequency

Celebrity esthetician Joshua Ross of SkinLab adds that the Trilogy Wand is a great choice, as well. '[It] mimics a radio frequency treatment in the office where the heat creates growth factors to help firm the skin — minimally invasive professional treatments in the office would be a radio frequency treatment," he explains. "This works to sculpt the jaw by heating the tissue, causing the skin to create growth factors to produce new collagen and elastin which will help support and tighten the skin around the jawline." Just keep in mind that generally speaking, at-home tools are best used at a younger age, notes Ross. When the skin begins to mature, professional treatments tend to be more effective.

In-Office Treatments

Filler

Restylane Defyne and Juvéderm Voluma XC are two popular FDA-approval dermal fillers that treat the chin. "Most [patients] will have some sort of bony deficiency of the chin and jawline that can easily be corrected with filler," says Dr. Bashey. To sculpt and define — versus the traditional plumping fillers that temporarily fill in sunken areas — he favors biostimulatory injectors, like Sculptura or hyper-diluted Radiesse, to stimulate the body's own collagen and build volume over time, adding projection to the chin and tightening the tissue along the anterior jawline.

Sculptura, in particular, is the most long-lasting injectable, with clinical trials showing a two-year lifespan. Although it can be used elsewhere on the body, it does its best, most effective work along the jawline to resolve moderate skin laxity.

Kybella

For jawlines that can have the appearance of a double chin, a popular non-invasive option is Kybella, an injectable specifically developed to dissolve fat cells underneath the chin and slim the jawline profile. "Kybella is an alternative to superficial liposuction and only addresses superficial fat," explains New York City-based board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Steven Levine, who cautions that while a non-invasive procedure is appealing to many, there are cons to consider.

"You never know how much of a reaction or result you're going to get with it because you're relying on the union of a drug and a person," he says. "Some people react wonderfully from it and get a great result and others won't." He adds that multiple injections are required, each with around 10 days of downtime, and reactions from each injection could vary.

Radio Frequency Treatments

"These work by heating the tissue from 39 to 41 degrees Celsius," Ross explains. "This will activate all of the growth factors and send them to the area being heated, resulting in more collagen and elastin, which will firm and tighten the skin. In my office, we use Venus Legacy for this treatment."

Ross recommends a plan of once a week for six weeks, and then six times a year afterward to maintain results. There's also generally no downtime. "These tightening treatments are considered a lifestyle treatment, so they're not permanent and you will continue to age," he shares. "They can range from $300 to $500 per treatment, but it's always a good idea to ask your provider if they can offer a package discount for purchasing multiple sessions at once."

Surgical Procedures

Chin Implants

Not widely known as a solution for a lackluster jaw, yet for the right candidate, a chin implant can help to sculpt the jawline. "If someone doesn't have a significantly projected chin, a small chin implant has a very, very powerful effect on the upper neck skin because you're using an implant to tighten the skin of the neck up by pulling that neck skin forward, while at the same time addressing some of the excess fat underneath," explains Manhattan-based board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Adam Kolker.

"By changing the architecture of the neck, you're also [changing] the appearance of the jawline, right below the jawline and the upper neck for a slimmer, more contoured look."

VIDEO: How to Do a Subtle Contour

Liposuction

The surgical sister to the non-invasive Kybella is liposuction — but it's not your mother's, or maybe even your babysitter's, liposuction. Leaps in recent technology have allowed for the formerly intensive surgery to evolve into a more precise procedure, with a shorter surgery time and recovery. According to Levine, the ideal candidate is usually 50 years old or younger.

"The limitation of liposuction is how elastic someone's skin is because the best result relies on skin contraction," explains Levine. "When you remove volume from the neck in a patient that has good elasticity, you actually get the jaw to look more contoured, and that can happen with superficial liposuction, which is the more traditional liposuction, or with deep neck contouring, where you're removing deep fat to improve the upper neck and chin. And both of these types of lipo are less invasive than a traditional neck lift."

Jawline, Neck, or Facelift

For a patient with a fair amount of skin or neck excess, jowling and settling at the jawline and beneath the chin, the only valuable option is limited to a surgical solution. "As we age, our youthful, heart-shaped face and neck from the hairline down to the collarbones, becomes a trapezoid where the upper face loses volume, the lower face gains volume and becomes wider, making the jawline wider, and things tend to settle in the jawline region," Dr. Kolker says of our facial evolution.

"Patients wanting to restore that heart shape of youth and to really see a significant improvement in the neck area, are likely to be a candidate for a jawline, neck, or facelift, which is to take that jawline, clean it up, bring the soft tissues that descended into the jawline and put them back where they came from."

Final Takeaway

Surgical procedures sit squarely at the top of the aesthetics hierarchy in terms of risks, cost, and commitment to overall recovery. Yet they are the golden standard for serious, durable results compared to nonsurgical alternatives that carrier fewer risks, but offer less pronounced short-term results. What's right for you is all a matter of your own personal aesthetic.

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