Am I Balding? Norwood Scale Test and Graft Calculator

What Norwood Am I? Pick the Closest Picture

Your Norwood stage is the card whose bare areas look most like the top of your head. The cards follow the stages Dr. O'Tar Norwood described after classifying the hair loss of 1,000 adult men in a study published in 1975.

1. Look at the top of your head. A photo taken from above in daylight, with dry hair, shows far more than a mirror; our guide to checking your own stage explains how to take one.

2. Tap the closest card. Match where the scalp shows: at the temples, at the crown or in both places. If two cards look equally close, note both.

3. Read your result. You see your likely stage, its starting graft range and a button that sends both to us on WhatsApp.

How to Read the Cards

Each card is a real photo of a man's head seen from above, with the forehead at the bottom and the crown at the top. Dark areas are hair and pale areas are scalp.

Cards 1 to 3 change only at the front, where the temple corners move back until they form a clear M or V. Card 3 vertex keeps that front and adds a thinning crown. From card 4 the front and the crown both grow, the band of hair between them is gone by card 6, and card 7 leaves a horseshoe of hair at the sides and back.

Am I Balding? What Your Picture Says

The card you picked answers the question: cards 1 and 2 mean you are not balding by the Norwood scale's measure, cards 3 and 3 vertex mean balding has started, and cards 4 to 7 mean it has spread across the top of the head. The line sits at stage 3 because Norwood treated stage 3 as the least hair loss that counts as baldness, as a review of hair loss classifications sets out.

• Cards 1 and 2: not balding yet. Temples that have moved back slightly and evenly are often just a mature hairline.
• Cards 3 and 3 vertex: balding has started at the temple corners, the crown or both, and the test shows a graft range for the first time.
• Cards 4 to 7: balding at both the front and the crown, which join from card 6 onward, in the pattern our guide to male pattern baldness explains.

For earlier clues, see the signs of hair loss; if you have been counting hairs on your pillow, our page on how much hair loss is normal puts that number in context.

If You Can See Your Scalp, Are You Balding?

Not necessarily: bright light from above, wet hair and a short cut let almost anyone's scalp show through, and dark hair on pale skin makes it stand out even more. What counts is where the scalp shows and whether that matches one of the cards.

If scalp shows at the temple corners, or as a thin circle at the crown, in dry hair and daylight, that looks like card 3 or 3 vertex. Scalp that shows only through a parting, under a spotlight or after a shower means little on its own. A swirl of hair at the crown can look thin too, and our crown balding guide shows how to tell a natural whorl from a balding crown.

What Your Test Result Shows

Your result shows your likely Norwood stage, the graft range our medical team starts planning from and what moves that number. Below is the result for card 3 vertex as the test shows it, part by part.

1. Your likely stage. The card you picked, named and described in one line.
2. Planning range. 2,700 to 5,000 grafts in this example. At stages 1 and 2 the result reads "usually no transplant", with 600 to 1,200 grafts only if the temples are refined.
3. Hairline and crown. Only stage 3 vertex splits the range: 1,500 to 2,500 grafts for the hairline and 1,200 to 2,500 for the crown, planned and added together.
4. What moves the number. Donor area, hair thickness, age and future loss; see what changes a graft count.
5. Package line. All-inclusive packages from $2,550 to $4,500, with no per-graft fee.
6. Next step. A WhatsApp message with your stage already filled in, or the free analysis form below.

The graft table of our Norwood scale guide lists the range for every stage, with the same numbers.

What Happens After You Get Your Result

Send your result to our medical team: the WhatsApp button opens a message that already names your stage and range. Add photos of the front, top and sides, and one of the back of your head, the donor area the grafts come from.

From those photos the team confirms your stage, checks your donor area and tells you the technique and graft range that fit, free and with no obligation; see how the exact number is confirmed.

When a transplant is not the right step for you yet, the team tells you honestly. When it is, our own team performs the procedure at partner hospitals and polyclinics in Istanbul. Turkey Hair Center is a UK-headquartered global hair restoration company.

How Our Graft Calculator Works

Our graft calculator does not measure your scalp: it turns the picture you pick into a Norwood stage, and the stage into the graft range our medical team starts planning from. Each stage stands for a typical size of bald area, so one tap gives a starting range.

1. Step 1Picture to stage

   The card you tap sets your likely stage: 1 to 7, or 3 vertex.

2. Step 2Stage to range

   Each stage has one planning range, kept in one place on our server, so this page and every website that embeds the test show the same numbers.

3. Step 3Photos to exact number

   Our medical team sets the exact number from your photos, above all those of the donor area.

Many graft calculators work the other way round, multiplying the bald area in square centimetres by a planned density, as our page on how area and density turn into a graft count shows. The Afro hair transplant graft calculator on our home page works from the areas you select, for curly and coily hair.

Online Balding Tests Compared

Online balding tests answer different questions: a picture test like ours shows the stage you have reached today, while a will I go bald calculator estimates your chance of losing hair in the future. The comparison below sets out the main types and where each one stops.

Picture Test or Will I Go Bald Calculator?

Use the picture test to see where you stand today and a will I go bald calculator for a rough sense of what may come. A risk calculator scores your answers about age, family and lifestyle and never sees your scalp, so if scalp already shows at your temples or crown, start with the picture.

The two work well together: family history shapes your odds, as our page on whether baldness is genetic explains, while the picture test, taken again over time, shows whether your own head has changed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Add This Norwood Test to Your Website

Bloggers, barbers, hair-loss forums and health writers can show this test to their readers for free. Paste the code into any page that accepts HTML. The test loads from our server, so stage descriptions and graft ranges stay current when our medical team updates them. It sets no cookies and asks readers for no personal details.

1. Paste the code where the test should appear, in an HTML or custom code block.
2. Keep the credit line under the test; it tells readers where the graft ranges come from.
3. Need it in French? Change data-lang="en" to data-lang="fr".

Use the Norwood Scale Diagram

Our diagram of all seven stages, seen from above, is free to use on your site with a credit link. It is a vector file, so it stays sharp at any size.