How to Take a Good Selfie, Light, Angle and Camera Tips

To take a good selfie, face a window in soft daylight, hold the phone at eye level about an arm length away, and relax your face before you tap. Those three things matter more than any filter. Want to see how your selfie reads to a computer. Try it in our free age guesser.

The three rules that fix most selfies

Most selfies go wrong in the same three ways. The light is harsh, the camera is too low, or the phone is too close. Fix those and almost every photo improves.

1. Soft light from the front. A window on a bright but cloudy day is perfect. The light wraps around your face and fills in shadows.
2. Camera at eye level or a little above. A phone held below your chin looks up your nose and makes the jaw and neck look heavier. Our guide to looking good in pictures covers camera height in more depth.
3. An arm length away. Distance keeps the wide front lens from stretching the middle of your face.

Find the right light

Light is the single biggest difference between a selfie you like and one you delete.

• Face the window. Turn toward the light, not away from it. Light from behind turns you into a silhouette.
• Avoid light from straight above. Ceiling lights and midday sun cast dark shadows under the eyes, nose and chin.
• Use the golden hour outside. The hour after sunrise and before sunset gives warm, low light that flatters almost everyone.
• Turn off mixed light. A warm lamp on one side and cool daylight on the other paints your skin two different colors.
• Skip the flash. A phone flash is small and harsh. It flattens your features and adds shine.

Hold the camera at the right height

Camera height changes the shape of your face in a photo. Eye level is the most natural view. A camera slightly above eye level shows the eyes clearly and softens the jaw, which is why so many people like it. Go too high, though, and your forehead grows while your body shrinks.

If you are not sure, take three shots, one at eye level, one a little above and one a little below, and compare them side by side.

Keep your distance

Phone front cameras use a wide angle lens. When the lens is very close, the parts of your face nearest the camera, like your nose, look bigger than the parts further away, like your ears.

This is measurable. A 2018 study in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery found that a photo taken about 12 inches from the face made the nose look around 30 percent wider than a photo taken from 5 feet away. The fix is simple. Hold the phone at arm length, use a selfie stick, or prop your phone up and use the timer.

Use the back camera and a timer

The back camera on most phones is sharper and less wide than the front one, so faces look more natural. You cannot see the screen, but you can work around that.

• Prop the phone on a shelf or a stack of books at eye level.
• Set a 3 or 10 second timer.
• Take a burst of photos and keep the best one.

Many phones also let you start the timer with your voice or a gesture, which saves running back and forth.

Phone settings that help

• Clean the lens. A fingerprint on the lens adds a hazy glow to every shot.
• Tap to focus on your eyes. Then slide the exposure down a little if your skin looks too bright.
• Turn on grid lines. They help you keep your eyes in the upper third of the frame and your phone level.
• Use portrait mode with care. It blurs the background nicely, but it can also blur the edges of hair and glasses.

Why your selfie looks flipped

Many phones show you a mirror image on screen while you frame a selfie, then save the photo the right way round. That is why your selfie can look slightly strange compared with the preview. People prefer the face they are used to, and a 1977 study found that people liked mirror images of their own face more, while their friends preferred the true photo. Read more in our guide to mirror vs camera. iPhones and many Android phones have a camera setting to save front camera photos as a mirror image, if you prefer that version.

Expression and pose

• Breathe out before you shoot. It relaxes the shoulders and the jaw.
• Think of something funny. A real smile reaches the eyes. A posed one often stops at the mouth.
• Push your face slightly toward the camera. Leading with the forehead a little and keeping the chin level gives a cleaner jaw line.
• Turn a little. A face angled slightly away from the camera usually looks more natural than one square on.

Edit lightly

A little brightness or warmth can rescue a dull selfie. Heavy edits change how people, and computers, read your face.

We tested this with our own age guesser. We took 60 photos of people whose real ages we knew and edited each one in a single simple way, then checked them again. Softening a photo, the way many beauty filters do, changed the guessed age in about half of the photos, usually by about 3 years. Turning a photo black and white changed it even more often. The same photo checked twice always got the same answer, so those changes came from the edits.

The lesson is not that edits are bad. It is that a natural, well lit photo gives the most honest picture of you. If you want tips on looking fresher in photos, see our guide on how to look younger.

A quick selfie checklist

1. Clean the lens.
2. Face a window or soft light.
3. Hold the phone at eye level, an arm length away.
4. Tap on your eyes to focus.
5. Breathe out, think of something funny, then shoot a short burst.
6. Pick the best shot and edit lightly.