Does Your Nose Keep Growing as You Age?

Does Your Nose Keep Growing?

Not in the way people mean. The question arrives in several forms: does your nose grow as you age, does your nose grow when you get older, does your nose get bigger with age. The answer to all of them is the same. The nose is built on a framework of bone at the top and cartilage lower down, and both finish growing in adolescence. Cartilage is not like hair or fingernails: once the nasal skeleton reaches its adult size, no new cartilage or bone is added. If your nose looked bigger at 60 than it did at 25, and it almost certainly did, nothing grew.

What has changed is everything around that framework. The ligaments and soft tissue that hold the tip of the nose up stretch and weaken. The cartilage itself loses some of its elasticity and stiffness. The skin over the nose thins and loses collagen, so it drapes rather than holds. Gravity does the rest, and the tip slowly descends. The nose has not grown, but it has lengthened, and that is a distinction worth understanding before you decide it needs correcting.

This is why measurement studies and biology seem to disagree. Researchers who measured the noses of 859 healthy people aged 4 to 73 found that nasal volume, surface area and every linear dimension increased from childhood right through to old age, while the angle of the nasal tip decreased with age, meaning the tip pointed progressively further downward (Sforza et al., 2010). Growth charts built from 2,500 people ranging from newborns to 97-year-olds show the same steady rise in nose length across adult life (Zankl et al., 2002). The nose does get bigger with age. It simply does not grow.

Why Does Your Nose Get Bigger as You Age?

Four things happen at once, and together they explain almost every change people notice in their nose after 40. A review of the ageing nose written for surgeons describes the same picture: changes in skin quality, cartilage strength, the underlying bone and the nasal airway all arrive together (Rohrich et al., 2004).

The tip loses its support

The tip of the nose is held up by a hammock of ligaments and by the strength of the two curved cartilages that form it. Over the decades those ligaments stretch, the cartilage softens, and the tip drifts downward and slightly forward. On profile, the angle between the nose and the upper lip, which surgeons call the nasolabial angle, becomes more acute. A long-term study of adults aged 21 to 94 confirmed that this angle, and the ratio of the nose’s height to its length, both change measurably with age (Edelstein, 1996). This is the single biggest reason an older nose reads as bigger: it is pointing down rather than out.

A bump seems to appear

Many people in their fifties notice a bump on the bridge that they are sure was not there before. Usually it was. As the tip drops, the bridge above it stays where it is, so the bridge is exposed and looks more prominent. Surgeons describe this as a relative dorsal hump: the profile of the classic ageing nose is a drooping tip beneath a bump that has been unmasked rather than created (Rohrich and Hollier, 1996). Our guide to the Roman nose covers what a convex bridge does and does not mean, and the nose bridge guide explains the anatomy of the upper third of the nose.

The skin thins, and sometimes thickens

Skin everywhere loses collagen and elasticity with age, and the skin of the nose is no exception. Thinner skin over the bridge shows every irregularity of the bone beneath it, so small bumps that were hidden in youth become visible. At the tip the opposite can happen in some people, particularly men: the oil glands enlarge and the skin becomes coarser and heavier, which adds bulk and weight to a tip that is already dropping.

The face recedes around the nose

This is the part almost nobody is told. The nose sits on a bony opening in the skull, and that opening does not stay still. A CT study of 60 adults across three age groups found that the area of the pyriform aperture, the bony opening of the nose, increased significantly between young and middle age, and that the angles of the brow and upper jaw both fell with age, meaning the bone around the nose retreats (Shaw and Kahn, 2007). When the upper jaw recedes beneath the nose, the nose loses its foundation, the tip drops further, and a nose of exactly the same size projects further from a face that has moved back behind it.

The same bone loss lengthens the upper lip, which is why the distance between the nose and the mouth grows with age; our guide to the long philtrum explains why that matters and how it is treated.

What Age Does Your Nose Grow the Most?

The nose grows fastest in early adolescence, in the same growth spurt that adds height. A systematic review of growth studies found that the nasofacial growth spurt ends at an average age of 13 in girls and just under 15 in boys, and that by 16 in girls and 17 in boys, 98% of adolescents have a nose that has reached its adult size (van der Heijden et al., 2008). That is why surgeons will not reshape a nose before growth is complete, and why our own policy is stricter still: we explain our reasons in our guide to the minimum age for rhinoplasty in the UK.

How much does your nose grow each year?

After the teens, not at all. What looks like the nose growing with age is, on the growth charts, a slow lengthening measured in millimetres over decades, driven by the softening and descent described above rather than by new tissue. It is gradual enough that most people only notice it when they compare a photograph from 30 years ago with the mirror, and it is more pronounced in men than in women (Sforza et al., 2010).

Can you grow into your nose?

Yes, up to a point. The nose completes its growth before the rest of the face has finished maturing, so a nose that looks too large at 14 or 15 often sits in better proportion by the early twenties once the jaw, chin and cheekbones have caught up. This is one of the reasons for waiting, and one of the reasons a consultation in your teens is rarely the right time to decide.

Nose Changes With Age: What You Might Notice

Most of the changes people ask about follow directly from the four processes above:

• The tip droops. Nose drooping with age is the change people notice first: the nose looks longer, particularly when you smile, because the muscles that pull the tip down are working against weaker support. See our guide to what causes a droopy nose.
• A bump appears on the bridge, or a small one becomes obvious, as the tip drops away from it and the skin over it thins.
• The tip widens as the cartilages that form it splay apart, and the nostrils can look larger.
• The nose looks bigger in profile because the upper jaw and lip have moved back behind it. Our guide to the perfect side profile explains why the chin and jaw are usually the real reason a profile looks nose-heavy.
• Breathing worsens. The same study of adults aged 21 to 94 found a pattern of increasing airflow resistance with age (Edelstein, 1996). As the tip drops and the sidewalls weaken, the narrowest point of the airway narrows further; our guide to nasal valve collapse explains this and the simple test for it.
• The skin changes: thinner and more translucent over the bridge, and sometimes thicker and more oily at the tip.

None of this is a deformity, and none of it needs treating unless it bothers you. A nose that has lengthened with age is a normal nose that has aged normally.

Can You Stop Your Nose Getting Bigger?

You cannot stop the tip descending, because you cannot stop ligaments stretching or cartilage softening, and no exercise, cream or device changes that. What you can protect is the skin. Sun protection slows the loss of collagen that thins the skin over the bridge, and not smoking matters for the same reason. Beyond that, the honest answer is that the changes are part of ageing, and the only thing that reverses them is surgery.

It is also worth knowing what the changes are not. A nose that becomes red, bumpy and bulbous at the tip in later life is usually rhinophyma, a skin condition related to rosacea, rather than the ageing described here, and it is treated differently. And a nose that has collapsed or scooped along the bridge is not ageing either; our guide to saddle nose deformity covers the causes.

Rhinoplasty for the Ageing Nose

Rhinoplasty in an older patient is a different operation from rhinoplasty at 25, because the problem is different. A younger patient usually wants tissue removed: a bump reduced, a tip narrowed. An older patient usually needs support restored. The surgical approach to the ageing nose emphasises rebuilding tip support with suture techniques and, where needed, cartilage grafts, keeps bone work to a minimum, and restores the internal nasal valve with spreader grafts so that breathing improves alongside appearance (Rohrich and Hollier, 1996).

In practice that means lifting and supporting the tip so the nose shortens back towards its earlier proportions, refining the bump that has been unmasked rather than aggressively reducing it, and addressing the airway at the same time; rhinoplasty and septoplasty are routinely combined for exactly this reason. The skin is thinner and the cartilage weaker than in a younger nose, so the surgeon has less margin for error, which is one reason the conservative approach matters. Where the nose is only part of the picture, rhinoplasty can be planned alongside a facelift or neck lift so that the whole profile is addressed together.

For a smaller change, non-surgical nose filler can lift a drooping tip and disguise a bump temporarily. It adds volume rather than restoring support, so the effect is limited and lasts months rather than years, but for some patients it is a useful trial before committing to surgery.

You can see results from our surgeons in our rhinoplasty before and after gallery, and our guide to rhinoplasty recovery explains what the weeks after surgery involve.

Frequently asked questions

Rhinoplasty in London at Centre for Surgery

If the changes in your nose bother you, a consultation with one of our surgeons at our CQC-regulated hospital at 95–97 Baker Street, London, will tell you what is realistic. Your surgeon will examine your nose, assess your breathing, explain what can and cannot be changed, and give you a written quote. The consultation costs £100, which is redeemable against the cost of treatment. Call 020 7993 4849 or book a consultation online.

Further reading

• What causes a droopy nose?
• The perfect side profile: why it’s usually not your nose
• Minimum age for rhinoplasty in the UK
• Rhinoplasty recovery and aftercare