The Norwood scale, stage by stage

The Hamilton–Norwood scale is how clinics, studies and patients describe male-pattern hair loss. Pick your closest stage below. Alongside the standard definition, we show the graft counts that hair transplant patients who named their doctor on reddit (the threads behind our directory) reported for that stage of loss: useful for sanity-checking any quote you receive.

Where the scale comes from

The anatomist James Hamilton classified male pattern hair loss in 1951; the dermatologist and hair transplant surgeon O'Tar Norwood revised his classification in 1975 after studying 1,000 men, into the seven types (plus a less common "A" variant) that are the most widely used today. In Norwood's scale, type I is minimal or no recession and type II is a triangular, usually symmetrical recession at the temples; type III is "the minimal extent of hair loss sufficient to be considered as baldness" (Gupta and Mysore, a review of hair-loss classifications, 2016). Norwood's “type III vertex” is hair loss mainly at the crown, with temple recession no deeper than type III. Half stages (“NW2.5”) are how people describe a hairline between two pictures.

Not sure whether a thin-looking crown is type III vertex or just your hair whorl? See balding crown or just a cowlick?.

Reading your own hairline honestly

Norwood 2 versus 3 is where most self-diagnosis goes wrong: a maturing hairline recedes a little and stops, pattern loss keeps going. Photos taken months apart under the same light tell you more than any single mirror check — if it's progressing, the shape deepens at the temples first. If you're unsure whether your hairline is receding at all, start with the receding-hairline self-check. How old people were at each stage, and how the stage moved for those who named it twice: receding hairline stages.

What each stage means for treatment

At earlier stages (2–3) there is more hair left for medication to keep, and, as the patient numbers above show, people who had surgery at those stages reported fewer grafts. Later stages shift the question toward donor supply and staging surgery across sessions. None of this replaces an assessment: it equips you to evaluate one. When you're comparing doctors, the directory shows each one's documented credentials, published prices and patient reports.

SaveMyHairline is an independent hair transplant doctor directory: published prices, checked credentials and real patient reports, with sources — and no clinic can pay to appear.