How Can I Lengthen My Short Forehead?

Q: Dr. Eppley, how can I lengthen my short forehead? I know many people want to shorten a long forehead and bring the scalp forward but I can’t find anywhere about doing the reverse of that. My forehead is so low that I think it makes me look unusual and almost simian like. The distance between my eyebrows and hairline is only 4.5 cms.

A: A traditional coronal browlift will lengthen your forehead to some degree but with that increase will be a resultant elevation of the brows as well. The problem is that simple stretching of the skin will not necessarily make for more than 1/2 to 1 cm of forehead lengthening without changing your brow position. There simply is not enough skin to stretch to make an appreciable difference. The most successful treatment of the short forehead is a two-stage approach with a tissue expander placed first followed by a pretrichial browlift approach. This is the most assured method of lengthening the forehead skin and moving the hairline back without adverse brow alteration. This works because the tissue expander is placed in the forehead and creates more forehead skin. The undesired amount of low scalp hair is then removed and replaced by new forehead skin.  

Dr. Barry Eppley

Indianapolis, Indiana