“Glasses are fine as long as there is no glare on the lenses.” That was true of United States passport photos, it was repeated everywhere for years, and it is now wrong in the one place people most need it to be right.
The United States banned eyeglasses in passport photos on 1 November 2016, with a narrow medical exception that requires a signed statement from a doctor. The passport photo rules for glasses, clothing and makeup are the ones people get wrong most reliably, and this is why. They changed, they differ between countries, and a lot of the advice online is a decade old.
The United Kingdom did not follow, and neither did most of the Schengen area. There the older position still holds: glasses are allowed if your eyes are clearly visible, with no glare, no reflection, no tinted lenses and no frame obscuring any part of the eye. Same question, opposite answers, both current. Which is why “can you wear glasses in a passport photo” has no single answer and never will.
This post goes item by item: eyewear, head coverings, hats, clothing, makeup, hair, jewellery and facial hair. Where a rule is firm I will give it to you firmly. Where it is a general pattern rather than a published rule, I will say so, because presenting a habit as a regulation is how people end up confidently wrong.
And the standing caveat, up front rather than buried at the bottom: these requirements get revised. Before you submit anything, open the official government page for your country and your exact application type, read the photo section, and check it against what you have. That page is the authority. Everything here is preparation for reading it properly.
The short answer
For a US passport or US visa photo, take your glasses off. The ban has been in force since 1 November 2016, and the only exception is medical, supported by a signed statement from a doctor. For a UK passport photo, glasses are allowed if your eyes are clearly visible with no glare, no reflection, no tinted lenses and no frame obscuring any part of the eye. Most Schengen countries take the same position, with several actively preferring no glasses. Head coverings are permitted almost everywhere for religious or medical reasons, provided the face is fully visible from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead, sometimes with a signed statement. Makeup is allowed. Hair must not cover the eyes or hide the face outline. Jewellery is normally fine unless it obscures a feature or reflects light. Avoid uniforms and avoid a top the same colour as the background.
Glasses: the rule that actually changed
This is the big one, so it gets the most space.
Before November 2016, US passport photos with glasses were common and generally accepted, subject to a glare rule. On 1 November 2016 the US State Department stopped accepting them. The stated reasoning was straightforward: reflections, frames and lens distortion were causing a meaningful number of photos to fail quality checks, and removing eyewear entirely removed the whole category of problem. If your last US passport shows you in your glasses, that is why it looks different from the one you are about to get.
The exception is narrow. You may wear glasses if you cannot remove them for medical reasons, for example after recent eye surgery, and you must supply a signed statement from a medical professional or health practitioner confirming it. Not liking how you look without them does not qualify. Neither does “I always wear them” or “my driving licence says corrective lenses”.
The UK position is different and has not changed in the same way. You can wear glasses in a UK passport photo. What you cannot have is glare on the lenses, a reflection that hides part of the eye, a frame that crosses the eyes, or tinted lenses. UK guidance is explicit that sunglasses and tinted glasses are not acceptable, and that your eyes must be clearly visible.
Schengen countries follow the ICAO Doc 9303 pattern, which permits glasses subject to the same visibility conditions: eyes clearly visible, no reflections, no heavy frames covering the eyes, no tint. Several member states have tightened their practical guidance over the last few years and now tell applicants that removing glasses is safer. I would take that advice. If the rule permits glasses but the checker’s software struggles with them, you are choosing risk for no benefit.
If you genuinely cannot see without them
You do not need to see during the photo. You need to hold still and look at a fixed point. Take the glasses off, have whoever is shooting tell you where the lens is, and look there. Blur is not a problem for the camera, only for you.
The one real difficulty is people whose eyes look markedly different without correction, for example a strong squint that appears when they are not wearing their glasses. Relax your face. A slight squint from concentration reads as narrowed eyes to an automated check, and narrowed eyes near the threshold can trigger an “eyes not clearly visible” flag.
Killing glare, if you are allowed glasses
Where glasses are permitted, glare is the failure mode. It comes from a light source reflecting off the lens surface straight into the camera, and it has a geometric fix rather than a photographic one.
Move the light off-axis. If your light source is a window, stand so the window is roughly 45 degrees off to one side of you rather than directly behind the camera. Tilt the arms of the glasses down very slightly at the ear so the lens plane angles away from the lens of the camera by a few degrees. Never use flash. And check at full zoom, because a small white patch over one iris is invisible on a phone preview and obvious at print size.
Item by item, country by country
| Item | United States | United Kingdom | Schengen area | General pattern |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prescription glasses | Not permitted since 1 Nov 2016. Medical exception needs a signed doctor’s statement | Permitted if eyes clearly visible, no glare, no tint, frames not covering eyes | Generally permitted on the same conditions; several states advise removing them | Trending toward no glasses |
| Sunglasses or tinted lenses | Not permitted | Not permitted | Not permitted | Never permitted |
| Religious head covering | Permitted with signed statement that it is customarily worn in public; full face visible | Permitted for religious or medical reasons; face visible chin to crown | Permitted on the same face-visibility condition | Widely permitted |
| Medical head covering | Permitted with a signed doctor’s statement | Permitted for medical reasons | Permitted | Widely permitted |
| Hats and non-religious headwear | Not permitted | Not permitted | Not permitted | Never permitted |
| Uniform or camouflage | Explicitly not permitted, including clothing resembling a uniform | Not advised | Not advised | Avoid everywhere |
| White or very pale top | Allowed, but merges with the required white background | Allowed, but merges with a light background | Same issue | Technically allowed, practically risky |
| Everyday makeup | Permitted | Permitted | Permitted | Permitted everywhere |
| Earrings and piercings | Permitted if features are not obscured | Permitted on the same condition | Permitted on the same condition | Usually fine |
| Headphones or earbuds | Not permitted | Not permitted | Not permitted | Never permitted |
| Beards and facial hair | Permitted, everyday appearance | Permitted | Permitted | No restriction |
Read that table as a snapshot of the common pattern, not a legal instrument. Countries revise their guidance and visa rules often diverge from passport rules for the same country. There is a fuller size and format reference in our passport and visa photo sizes by country table if you also need the millimetres.
Head coverings, religious and medical
Almost every issuing authority permits head coverings worn for religious or medical reasons. The condition is consistent and worth memorising: the full face must be visible from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead, and the covering must not cast a shadow over the face.
For US applications you may be asked to include a signed statement confirming that the head covering is part of traditional religious attire customarily or continuously worn in public, or a signed doctor’s statement for a covering worn for medical reasons such as during chemotherapy. Preparing that statement in advance is sensible if you know it applies to you.
Practical detail that matters more than the paperwork: the edge of a scarf or veil sitting low on the forehead is the usual cause of trouble, because the hairline area gets covered and the checker cannot see the top of the forehead. Pull the fabric back a centimetre or two further than feels natural. The same goes for a turban worn low at the front.
Shadow is the second issue. A raised fabric edge above the forehead acts like a small awning under an overhead light and puts a band of shade across the eyes. Light from the front and slightly high, not from directly above, or shoot facing a window.
Baseball caps, beanies, fashion headbands and hoods are not permitted anywhere I am aware of. If the covering is not religious or medical, it comes off.
Clothing: no rule, one very good practical rule
Most countries do not publish a dress code beyond banning uniforms. The US is the most explicit here, telling applicants not to wear a uniform, clothing that resembles a uniform, or camouflage. Everyday clothing is what they want, and everyday clothing is what you should wear.
The practical rule nobody prints on the form is about contrast. The US requires a plain white or off-white background. Wear a white shirt against a white background and your shoulders vanish. To a human reviewer that looks odd. To an automated segmentation check, the boundary of the subject becomes ambiguous, and ambiguous boundaries are exactly what a checker flags. The UK uses a plain light grey or cream background, which produces the same problem with a cream or beige top.
Choose a mid-tone or dark colour. Navy, mid-blue, forest green, burgundy, charcoal and mid-grey all work. Plain beats patterned, because a busy print near the neckline draws the eye and, in a small print, turns to visual noise.
If you have already taken the photo in a white shirt and cannot easily reshoot, the honest options are limited. Changing the background to a slightly different shade of white does not help, because the problem is the shoulder edge rather than the backdrop, though the Background Remover can at least give you a clean, evenly lit backdrop to work against. Reshooting in a different top is faster than any of it.
Two more things that cause avoidable trouble. Strapless or very wide-necked tops can, in a tight passport crop, make the subject appear to have no clothing at all, which some authorities note as a reason for rejection. And high collars or scarves pulled up can cover the bottom of the chin, which is the exact point head height is measured from.
Since I am giving opinions: I would wear a plain crew-neck or a shirt with a modest collar in a solid mid-tone, and I would not think about it again.
Makeup, shine and skin
Makeup is allowed. No country asks you to remove it, and everyday makeup does not affect acceptance.
The problems are technical. Shimmer, highlighter and dewy finishes create specular highlights on the cheekbones, nose and forehead, especially with any direct light. Those hot spots blow out to pure white in the file and can read as overexposure. A matte finish photographs better under every lighting condition, and a quick pass with a powder or even a tissue on the T-zone makes a visible difference.
Heavy contouring is the second issue. Contour works by faking shadow, and the whole point of a biometric portrait is to record the actual shape of your face under even lighting. Strong contour along the jaw and nose can shift the apparent face outline. I would not lose sleep over normal makeup, but I would go lighter than you would for an evening out.
Very dark, heavy eye makeup can make the eye region harder to read, particularly where a checker is locating the pupil centres to verify eye height. Defined but not dramatic is the safe zone.
Hair, fringes and the head-height trap
The rule is simple to state. Hair must not cover your eyes, and it must not obscure the outline of your face. A fringe that sits on or above the eyebrows is fine. Hair falling across one eye is not. Loose hair over the cheeks is usually acceptable as long as the face outline is still readable, though tucking it behind the shoulders removes any doubt.
The trap is a different one, and it catches people with tall or voluminous hair. Head height in a passport photo is measured from the bottom of the chin to the crown, meaning the top of the head, not the top of the hairstyle. In practice, a checker measuring your photo may struggle to tell where the head ends and the hair begins, so a large afro, a high bun, a beehive or thick volume on top can push the measurement over the limit.
Here is the arithmetic, with a name attached. Say Petra is preparing a UK photo, which is 35x45 mm printed, with chin-to-crown face height required between 29 and 34 mm. Digitally she is working at 600x750 px, so 750 px maps to 45 mm and one millimetre is 750 / 45 = 16.67 px. That gives a target band of 29 x 16.67 = 483 px to 34 x 16.67 = 567 px.
She measures her photo in an editor. Chin sits at y = 690 px from the top, and the top of her actual head sits at y = 155 px, giving 535 px of head height. Comfortably inside the 483 to 567 band. But the top of her updo sits at y = 96 px, giving 594 px if someone measures to the hair. That is 27 px over the limit. The difference between passing and failing is entirely about where the measurement is taken.
Her fix is not to reshoot. It is to wear her hair down or lower on the day, so there is no ambiguity for anyone to resolve against her. If your hairstyle creates a judgement call, remove the judgement call. There is a much fuller treatment of chin-to-crown measurement, eye height and centring in our post on head size and crop.
Getting the crop right once the styling is sorted
Once you have the glasses off, the top changed and the hair sorted, the remaining work is geometry, and geometry is where a good photo still fails. The head has to land inside a millimetre range, the eye line has to sit in a band, and the file has to come out at exact pixel dimensions.
That is the job the Passport Photo Maker does. Load the shot, choose the country and application type, and it applies that specification to your crop and exports at the right dimensions. It runs entirely in your browser, so the photo never leaves your device, there is no sign-up and nothing gets stored on a server. If you already know your exact millimetres and want a straight cut to size, the Passport Size Photo Maker handles that in one step. And if you want to check what the camera recorded before you send anything anywhere, the EXIF Remover strips location and device data out of the file first.
Jewellery, piercings and facial hair
Jewellery is usually fine. The condition, everywhere I have seen it stated, is that it must not obscure any part of your face, must not reflect light into the lens, and must not cast a shadow.
Large hoop earrings that overlap the jawline are the common offender, because the jaw outline is part of the face geometry. Highly polished studs can flare under direct light. Nose rings, septum jewellery and eyebrow bars are generally acceptable as long as they sit clear of the eyes and the mouth. A lip ring is fine. A large piece of jewellery sitting over the philtrum is asking for a discussion you do not want to have.
Facial hair has no restriction at all. Beards, moustaches and stubble are part of your everyday appearance, which is precisely what a passport photo is supposed to record. The only sensible advice here is consistency: if you routinely wear a full beard and you shave it off for the photo, you have created a document that does not look like you at a border. Shoot yourself as you normally look.
Coloured or cosmetic contact lenses sit in a grey zone. They do not obscure the eye, so they rarely cause an outright rejection, but they change your apparent iris colour, and some authorities ask for a natural appearance. I would take them out. It costs nothing.
What actually goes wrong
Glasses left on for a US application. Still the most common version of this whole category, mostly because people are copying their previous passport photo, which predates November 2016.
Glare in one lens where glasses are permitted. Usually one small white oval over an iris, invisible on a phone screen, obvious to the checker.
A white shirt on a white background. Shoulders disappear, edge detection fails, photo comes back.
A scarf or turban edge sitting too low on the forehead, so the top of the forehead is not visible.
Hair across an eye. Often a strand the subject did not notice because they were looking at their face as a whole rather than the eye region.
Tall hair pushing the measured head height over the maximum, or an ambiguous crown that a checker resolves conservatively.
Shine on the forehead and nose from an overhead light plus makeup with shimmer in it. This one is easy to fix at the point of shooting and impossible to fix afterwards without editing that can itself look like manipulation.
Earbuds. People genuinely forget they are wearing them, and small white in-ear buds are close to invisible in a phone preview.
Retouching. Smoothing skin, removing a blemish, whitening teeth or slimming a jaw with an app filter can all be read as an altered image. Do not edit your face. Crop, resize and correct exposure, and stop there.
Before you submit
Run this in order. It takes about four minutes and it catches nearly everything that gets a photo bounced on styling grounds.
- Take the glasses off if this is a US application. If you are applying somewhere that permits them, take them off anyway unless you have a reason not to. You lose nothing and you remove an entire category of failure.
- Change your top to something that is not white and not a uniform. Mid-tone works. Check in the mirror that the shoulder line will read as a shoulder line rather than dissolving into the wall.
- Pull your hair clear of your eyes and eyebrows. Fringe pinned back, nothing crossing the eye line, nothing casting a shadow across one socket.
- Take out anything that sits on your face. Large earrings that cross the jaw, a nose ring catching the light, a hat, a hairband with a bow on top.
- Shoot facing a window, with the flash off, standing at least 45 cm clear of the wall behind you. Have someone else hold the camera about 1.2 m away.
- Size it properly, because styling and geometry fail independently and you need both. Running the finished frame through the ToolFiddle passport photo tool settles the crop and the pixel dimensions in one pass, on your device, with nothing uploaded.
- Inspect the file at full zoom, not at thumbnail size. Each eye separately for glare and stray hair. The shoulder line against the background. The forehead for a covering edge or a hot spot. The ears for anything you forgot to remove.
- Read the official rules line by line against what you are holding.
That last step is the one I would not skip. Open the official passport or visa page for your country and your specific application type, and read the photo section against your actual file. Rules change. The version in your memory, or in a forum post from three years ago, is not the version being applied to your application today. If anything here disagrees with the government page, the government page wins.
Frequently asked questions
Can you wear glasses in a passport photo?
Not for a US passport. The State Department stopped accepting photos with eyeglasses on 1 November 2016, and the only exception is a medical one supported by a signed statement from a doctor. The UK and most Schengen countries still permit glasses if your eyes are clearly visible with no glare, no tint and no frame covering any part of the eye.
Can I wear a headscarf or turban in a passport photo?
Yes, in most countries, where the covering is worn for religious or medical reasons and the full face is visible from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead. The US may ask for a signed statement confirming the covering is customarily worn in public, or a doctor’s note for a medical covering. Nothing may cast a shadow across the face.
What colour top should I wear for a passport photo?
Anything that contrasts with the background. On the white or off-white background the US requires, a white or very pale top merges your shoulders into the backdrop and can fail an automated edge check. Mid-tone blue, grey, green or a dark colour works well. Avoid uniforms, anything resembling a uniform, and camouflage patterns.
Is makeup allowed in a passport photo?
Yes. Everyday makeup is fine and no country asks you to remove it. The problems are practical rather than regulatory: heavy contouring can alter the apparent shape of your face, shimmer and highlighter create hot spots under a flash, and very dark or dramatic eye makeup can make it harder for a checker to locate the eye line accurately.
Does my hair need to be tied back for a passport photo?
It does not have to be tied back, but it must not cover your eyes or hide the outline of your face. A fringe sitting above the eyebrows is fine. Hair falling across an eye is not. Tall or voluminous hair raises a separate issue, because chin-to-crown head height is measured to the top of the head rather than the top of the hairstyle.
Can I wear earrings or a nose ring in a passport photo?
Usually yes. Jewellery and facial piercings are generally acceptable as long as they do not obscure any part of your face, reflect light into the lens, or cast a shadow. Large hoop earrings that overlap the jawline and highly reflective studs are the two that cause trouble. Check the current guidance for your country, since some are stricter than others.
The part that actually matters
Most of this category comes down to one habit: decide what the checker will see, not what you would like them to see. A small reflection, a pale shoulder line, a strand of hair, a scarf edge. None of it feels significant while you are standing in front of the wall, and all of it is what an application gets returned for.
So work the list before you shoot rather than after. Glasses off for the US. Contrasting top. Hair clear of the eyes. Nothing in your ears. Then take twenty frames instead of two, because the cost of extra frames is zero and the cost of a second attempt is weeks.
And confirm the current rules on the official page for your country and application type before you send anything. The requirements move, they differ between passports and visas, and the government page is the only version that counts.