Crow’s Feet: What Causes Them and How to Get Rid of Them

In this guide12 sections

1. What are crow’s feet?
2. Why crow’s feet eyes appear before other wrinkles
3. What causes crow’s feet — and what makes them worse
4. Can weight loss cause crow’s feet?
5. Dynamic versus static: the distinction that decides your treatment
6. How to get rid of crow’s feet: the treatment ladder
7. When surgery is the right answer
8. What the best crow’s feet treatment is for your stage
9. Crow’s feet before and after: what results realistically look like
10. Cost of crow’s feet treatment
11. Frequently asked questions
12. References

Crow’s feet are the fine lines that radiate outward from the outer corner of the eye. They appear earlier than wrinkles anywhere else on the face because the skin around the eye is the thinnest you have — roughly half the thickness of the skin on your cheek — and it sits directly over one of the busiest muscles in the body.

Most people notice them first in photographs, usually in their early thirties, and usually while smiling. That timing is not a coincidence, and understanding why matters, because it determines which treatments will work for you and which will waste your money. This guide covers what crow’s feet are, why they form before other lines, and the full ladder of options from skincare through anti-wrinkle injections and energy-based treatment to surgery.

What are crow’s feet?

Crow’s feet are wrinkles that fan out from the lateral canthus — the outer corner of the eye — in a pattern that resembles a bird’s footprint, which is where the name comes from. They are sometimes called lateral canthal lines in clinical settings, or laughter lines in everyday speech.

They belong to a category called dynamic rhytides: lines produced by repeated muscle movement folding the skin in the same place, thousands of times a day, over decades. This distinguishes them from lines caused by volume loss or gravity, and it is the reason treatments that add volume elsewhere on the face do relatively little here.

Crow’s feet wrinkles are not a medical problem. They carry no health consequence, they are not a sign that anything is wrong, and plenty of people have no interest in treating them. Treatment is appropriate when the appearance bothers you — not because the lines need correcting.

Why crow’s feet eyes appear before other wrinkles

The muscle responsible is the orbicularis oculi, the ring-shaped muscle encircling the eye that closes the eyelid. It contracts every time you blink, smile, squint or laugh. Its lateral fibres, where the muscle overlaps the temple, produce the radiating creases we recognise as crow’s feet.

Three anatomical factors make this the first area of the face to show its age.

The skin is exceptionally thin. Skin at the lateral canthus measures roughly half a millimetre, against about two millimetres on the cheek. Thin skin creases more readily under the same mechanical load, and holds those creases for longer once folded.

The muscle is exceptionally active. The orbicularis oculi is among the most frequently contracted muscles you have. A typical person blinks somewhere between fifteen and twenty times a minute, every waking hour. No other facial muscle comes close to that duty cycle.

There is almost no fat padding underneath. Elsewhere on the face, a layer of subcutaneous fat sits between muscle and skin and buffers the movement. Around the lateral eye there is very little, so the skin folds directly over the contracting muscle with nothing to cushion it.

Put those three together and you get lines forming in an area that gets more mechanical stress, with less structural protection, than anywhere else on the face. It is why patients with otherwise smooth skin often see crow’s feet first, and why the eye area responds differently to treatment than the cheeks or jawline.

For a broader view of how facial ageing progresses, our guide on fine lines versus wrinkles covers what separates the two and when each becomes fixed.

What causes crow’s feet — and what makes them worse

Muscle activity is the underlying mechanism, but several factors determine how quickly lines progress from occasional creases to permanent ones.

Ultraviolet exposure is the largest modifiable factor. UV degrades dermal collagen and elastin directly, and the periorbital area takes a disproportionate share of it because most people do not apply sunscreen right up to the lash line. The NHS guidance on sun safety ↗ is the baseline worth following, with the addition that the eye area needs deliberate attention rather than whatever spreads there incidentally.

Squinting compounds UV damage. Bright light without sunglasses produces sustained orbicularis contraction on top of the photodamage. The two effects are multiplicative rather than additive — you are folding skin that has been simultaneously weakened.

Smoking accelerates progression through two routes. It degrades collagen directly, and smokers squint more in response to smoke irritation.

Sleep position produces asymmetry. Patients who consistently sleep on one side frequently develop deeper crow’s feet on the pillow-facing side. It is one of the more common reasons someone notices their lines are uneven.

Chronic dry eye drives constant micro-squinting. Screen work, contact lens wear and air conditioning all reduce blink quality and increase compensatory squinting. Treating the dryness genuinely slows line formation.

Uncorrected vision does the same thing. Anyone straining to read without the right prescription is squinting all day without registering it. An eye test is an unglamorous but effective intervention.

Can weight loss cause crow’s feet?

Weight loss does not create crow’s feet by itself. The lines still come from the orbicularis oculi folding the skin each time you smile or squint. What weight loss changes is how much support sits around them. The skin at the outer corner of the eye has almost no fat of its own, so it depends on the neighbouring temple and upper-cheek fat to hold it smooth. A 2007 cadaver dissection study in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery ↗ showed that facial fat is divided into separate compartments, including a lateral temporal-cheek compartment right beside the crow’s feet area, and that each compartment changes independently with age.^[6]

After significant or rapid weight loss, including weight loss on GLP-1 medication, those compartments deflate. A 2026 review in Dermatologic Surgery describes loss of volume in the superficial fat compartments, reduced deep support and looser skin, which together make existing signs of ageing more pronounced.^[7] In practice, lines that once showed only when you smiled can start to show at rest.

That shifts the treatment plan. Anti-wrinkle injections still soften the muscle-driven creases, but when the lines sit on deflated tissue, skin-quality treatments and carefully placed support such as temple filler often make the bigger difference. Our guide to weight-loss face covers the wider changes, and sunken cheeks explains how mid-face volume loss is assessed.

Dynamic versus static: the distinction that decides your treatment

This is the single most useful thing to understand about crow’s feet, and it is where most online advice falls down.

Dynamic lines appear only when the muscle contracts. Smile, and they are there; relax, and the skin returns to smooth. At this stage the skin itself is undamaged — it is simply being folded. Treatments that reduce muscle contraction work extremely well here.

Static lines are visible at rest, with your face completely relaxed. By this point repeated folding has created structural change in the dermis: collagen has been disrupted along the fold line and the skin has, in effect, learned the crease. Reducing muscle movement helps, but it cannot smooth a line that is etched into the skin. Static lines need treatment that rebuilds collagen.

Most people in their late thirties and forties have a mixture — lines that deepen dramatically on smiling but remain faintly visible at rest. That mixture is why combination treatment usually outperforms any single modality, and why anyone promising that one treatment will remove established crow’s feet entirely is overselling.

A simple test: look in a mirror in good light with a completely relaxed face. What you can see at rest is the static component. What appears when you smile is the dynamic component. The proportion of each determines what will actually work for you.

How to get rid of crow’s feet: the treatment ladder

Skincare — and whether eye creams for crow’s feet do anything

Daily broad-spectrum SPF applied properly around the eye is the highest-value intervention available, and it costs almost nothing. It will not reverse existing lines, but it substantially slows the rate at which dynamic lines convert to static ones. Wraparound sunglasses do double duty by blocking UV and removing the reason to squint.

On the question of whether a crow’s feet eye cream works: it depends entirely on what is in it. Products with no active ingredient hydrate the skin, which temporarily plumps fine lines and makes them look better for a few hours. That is a cosmetic effect, not a structural one. Low-concentration retinol is the one widely available ingredient with genuine evidence for collagen stimulation, though the periorbital skin is sensitive and it needs introducing slowly — twice weekly at first, building as tolerated. Peptide and antioxidant formulations have a more modest evidence base.

The honest summary is that skincare is preventive and maintaining rather than corrective. It is worth doing consistently, and it will not remove a line you already have.

Anti-wrinkle injections for crow’s feet

Injecting a small dose of muscle-relaxing product into the lateral fibres of the orbicularis oculi is the most direct treatment available for the dynamic component. Relaxing those fibres stops the skin folding when you smile.

What happens. The appointment takes around ten minutes and needs no numbing cream. Two or three small injections are placed per side, along the lateral orbital rim and outside the bony socket. The needle is very fine and most patients describe it as a brief sting.

Timing. Initial softening at three to five days, full effect at around two weeks. The result typically lasts three to four months before muscle activity gradually returns.

The honest limit. This works very well on dynamic crow’s feet and only partially on static ones. If your lines are visible at rest, relaxing the muscle will soften them but will not erase them, because the problem at that point is in the skin rather than the muscle. Patients who expect complete smoothing from injections alone are usually the ones who end up disappointed.

On dosing conservatively. The lateral orbicularis contributes to the cheek-lifting movement of a natural smile. Over-treatment can flatten that movement or produce bunching under the lower lid. A conservative first dose with the option of a two-week top-up is a better approach than aiming for maximum relaxation at the first appointment. Our anti-wrinkle injections page covers assessment and aftercare in more detail.

Energy-based crow’s feet treatment: laser and radiofrequency

Where injections address muscle, energy-based treatment addresses skin — which makes it the more important half of the equation once lines are static.

The evidence here is reasonably good. A 2021 study in Lasers in Medical Science ↗ of 71 patients aged 33 to 63 compared non-ablative fractional laser, bipolar radiofrequency and intense pulsed light on the periorbital region across five sessions each, measuring skin elasticity objectively with a Cutometer rather than relying on patient opinion. All three improved elasticity and reduced wrinkle depth; non-ablative fractional laser produced the largest improvement in the elasticity parameters and outperformed the other two significantly.^[1]

SmoothEye uses the Fotona Er:YAG laser in non-ablative SMOOTH mode. Long-pulse energy heats the dermis without breaking the skin surface, stimulating new collagen over the following months. Most patients need three to four sessions spaced about four weeks apart, with no downtime — you can return to work immediately. Tightening becomes visible from around three to four weeks after the first session and continues developing for two to three months after the course finishes.

Morpheus8 pairs microneedling with radiofrequency energy delivered at depth. It remodels collagen more aggressively than non-ablative laser, at the cost of four to seven days of pinkness and small scabs. It suits patients whose concern includes crepey skin texture rather than lines alone, and those whose crow’s feet extend down onto the upper cheek.

Fotona 4D treats the full face across four sequential modes and picks up crow’s feet as part of wider rejuvenation. It is the right choice when the eye area is one concern among several rather than the only one.

Focused ultrasound is a further option in this category. A 2025 systematic review in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal ↗ of 45 clinical studies found skin laxity improvements of 18 to 30 per cent across treated areas including the periorbital region, with fewer than five per cent of patients reporting transient redness, swelling or discomfort.^[2] The same review noted that treatment protocols remain poorly standardised between providers, which is a fair reason to ask what settings and what course length any clinic is proposing.

Filler for crow’s feet — a limited and often misunderstood role

Dermal filler is not a first-line treatment for crow’s feet, and it is worth being direct about why. The skin over the lateral canthus is too thin to conceal filler reliably, and the lines are driven by muscle activity rather than volume deficit. Injecting filler directly into crow’s feet risks visible lumpiness and a bluish discolouration where product sits too superficially.

What does help is treating the surrounding architecture. Dermal filler placed in the lateral cheek or temple restores volume whose loss makes the whole eye area read as tired, and that indirectly reduces how prominent crow’s feet appear. When a patient’s actual complaint is “I look exhausted” rather than “I can see lines”, the useful treatment is frequently in the tear trough or midface rather than at the crow’s feet themselves.

Injectable skin boosters are a separate category worth mentioning. A randomised split-face trial compared a polynucleotide-based injectable against non-crosslinked hyaluronic acid in the periorbital area across three sessions, and found the polynucleotide side produced greater improvement in skin roughness and pore volume, with elasticity and hydration also favouring it, and no serious adverse events in either group.^[3] These treatments improve skin quality rather than filling lines, which makes them a reasonable adjunct for static crow’s feet in patients who want to avoid energy-based devices.

When surgery is the right answer

There is a point at which no injection or laser closes the gap. Once there is genuine skin laxity, hooding of the upper lid, or a descended brow, the problem has become structural and non-surgical maintenance stops delivering proportionate results.

An important clarification, because a great deal of published material gets this wrong: eyelid surgery does not remove crow’s feet. Crow’s feet are produced by orbicularis contraction, and no skin excision stops a muscle contracting. What surgery does is address the laxity, hooding and brow position that accompany them, which changes how the eye area reads overall. Patients who have blepharoplasty specifically to remove their crow’s feet are usually disappointed. Patients who have it for hooding, and receive injections for the lines, get what they wanted.

Blepharoplasty removes excess upper or lower eyelid skin. Upper lid surgery takes one to one and a half hours, is performed under local anaesthetic or TIVA, and needs about a week away from social commitments. It transforms a hooded upper lid and does nothing whatsoever to lateral lines.

Brow lift, including the endoscopic brow lift, repositions a descended brow. When the brow drops, lateral skin bunches and crow’s feet look deeper than the underlying lines actually are — so lifting the brow improves their appearance geometrically rather than by treating them. A review of open browlift technique describes the forehead and periorbital areas as a single aesthetic unit that has to be assessed together rather than separately,^[4] which matches what we see in consultation: brow position and eyelid appearance are rarely separable problems.

Canthoplasty tightens and repositions the outer corner. It is indicated for lateral lid laxity or a rounded eye shape rather than for lines.

Facial fat transfer restores lost volume in the temple and lateral cheek, addressing the wider context of periorbital ageing.

All surgical procedures at Centre for Surgery are performed by GMC-registered plastic surgeons, at our Baker Street day-surgery facility, which is regulated by the Care Quality Commission and rated Good overall.

What the best crow’s feet treatment is for your stage

Matching treatment to stage matters more than choosing the newest device.

Dynamic lines only, smooth at rest. Anti-wrinkle injections are the most effective single step, with SPF and sunglasses as the maintenance layer. Nothing else is required at this stage, and energy-based treatment is largely wasted on skin that has not yet changed structurally.

Faint static lines alongside dynamic ones. Combination treatment: injections for the movement, plus SmoothEye or Morpheus8 for the skin quality. This is the most commonly appropriate combination for patients in their thirties and forties, and it consistently outperforms either component alone.

Deep static lines with texture change. Energy-based treatment becomes the primary intervention and injections the supporting one. Expect a course rather than a single session, and expect improvement rather than erasure.

Significant laxity, hooding or brow descent. Surgical assessment. The honest answer for this group is that non-surgical treatment will not deliver what they are asking for, and continuing to buy it is expensive disappointment.

A consultation with our specialist team, including Dr Spyridon Vlachos, establishes which category applies and recommends the lightest intervention that will actually achieve your goal.

Crow’s feet before and after: what results realistically look like

Expectation-setting is where most dissatisfaction originates, so it is worth being specific.

After anti-wrinkle injections on dynamic lines, the smiling appearance changes substantially — often to the point where lines are absent on animation. At rest, if there was nothing visible before, there is nothing visible after.

After a course of energy-based treatment on static lines, expect softening and improved skin texture rather than removal. Lines become shallower and the skin looks less crepey. Photographs taken in identical lighting show the change clearly; a mirror at arm’s length often understates it.

After combination treatment, the two effects compound and the overall result is the most convincing of the three — but it is still improvement, not reversal.

What no treatment does is return periorbital skin to its twenty-year-old state. Any before-and-after that appears to show this has usually changed the lighting, the camera angle or the patient’s expression between the two frames.

Cost of crow’s feet treatment

Treating the upper face as a unit — crow’s feet together with frown lines and forehead lines — is usually better value than booking each area separately, and produces a more balanced result because the muscles interact.

Prices for these treatments are on our Skin & Aesthetics price list.

SmoothEye and Morpheus8 are priced per session, and most patients book a course of three to four. Surgical costs vary considerably by procedure and are quoted following consultation.

Finance is available through Chrysalis Finance. Finance is available through Chrysalis Finance, subject to status. Lending is subject to status.

Frequently asked questions

References

1. Kołodziejczak A, Rotsztejn H. Efficacy of fractional laser, radiofrequency and IPL rejuvenation of periorbital region. Lasers in Medical Science, 2021;37(2):895–903. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10103-021-03329-7
2. Haykal D, Sattler S, Verner I, Madhumita M, Cartier H. A Systematic Review of High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound in Skin Tightening and Body Contouring. Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 2025;45(7):690–698. https://doi.org/10.1093/asj/sjaf053
3. Lee YJ, Kim HT, Lee YJ, et al. Comparison of the effects of polynucleotide and hyaluronic acid fillers on periocular rejuvenation: a randomized, double-blind, split-face trial. Journal of Dermatological Treatment, 2020;33(1):254–260. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546634.2020.1748857
4. Sundine MJ, Connell BF. The Open Browlift. Facial Plastic Surgery, 2018;34(2):128–138. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0038-1637003
5. Cantisani C, Amori P, Vitiello G, et al. Nonsurgical blepharoplasty. Dermatologic Therapy, 2019;32(6):e13119. https://doi.org/10.1111/dth.13119
6. Rohrich RJ, Pessa JE. The fat compartments of the face: anatomy and clinical implications for cosmetic surgery. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 2007;119(7):2219–2227. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.prs.0000265403.66886.54
7. Frank K, Guertler A, Hoffmeister V, et al. GLP-1-Induced Weight Loss and the Face: Anatomical Mechanisms and Rationale for Collagen-Stimulating and Volumizing Aesthetic Treatments. Dermatologic Surgery, 2026;52(6S):S55–S60. https://doi.org/10.1097/DSS.0000000000005180

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