Brow Lift Turkey

We get a steady stream of emails asking about eyelid surgery from people whose eyelids, honestly, are fine. What's actually dropped is the eyebrow, and it's been pushing skin down onto the lid for years. Those lines across the forehead? That's the muscle that's been holding the brow up all this time. In that situation a brow lift in Turkey is usually the better operation, and the lids often look lighter without anyone touching them.

It can go the other way, too. Plenty of people convinced they need their brows lifted turn out to have a perfectly good brow and a bit of extra lid skin. So before anything else, we try to find out which you've got.

Brow lift or eyelid surgery?

Try this at a mirror. With your forehead completely relaxed, push one eyebrow up with a fingertip until it's roughly back where it used to be. If the hooded, heavy look over that eye mostly goes away, your brow is behind much of it. If there's still a fold sitting on the lashes, there's lid skin to deal with as well, and that's a job for upper blepharoplasty.

Many end up with a bit of both. That's fine; the two are often done on the same day.

Questions worth asking

Wherever you go, ask the surgeon to tell you, after examining you, whether it's the brow, the lid or both, and how much lift they're planning. Ask which of the three techniques they'd choose for you and what it'll do to your hairline, and whether you can look at before and after results for brows like yours. Any surgeon used to doing a brow lift in Istanbul or elsewhere should be comfortable with all of that.

How a low brow shows itself

It usually starts at the tail. The outer third of the eyebrow slides down, and suddenly you look a bit cross or a bit sad in photos when you're neither. Some people only notice because friends keep asking if they're tired. Others notice the forehead first, since those deep lines across it come from the muscle that's been hauling the brows upwards all day. An ache across the forehead at the end of a long day in front of a screen is another thing patients mention more than you'd expect.

Endoscopic, temple or forehead lift

There isn't one brow lift; there are three main ways of doing it, and which suits you depends heavily on your hairline.

The endoscopic brow lift is the most common choice. The surgeon works through a handful of short cuts tucked into the hair, watching on a screen through a small camera, and the hairline stays put. When only the tail of the brow has fallen, a temple lift through small cuts at the sides is often enough; some clinics list it as a temporal brow lift. For the biggest change there's the coronal or forehead lift, a longer cut across the top of the head that also removes loose skin. The trade-off is a slightly higher hairline.

Price won't settle it

Two of the three cost exactly the same, €2,300, and the forehead lift is €2,800. With that little between them, the decision really is about your face. If your forehead is already tall, the coronal option is less attractive, and our hairline lowering page covers an operation that does almost the opposite. Mention it if that's on your mind.

The look nobody wants

You'll know it when you see it: the permanently startled expression of a brow that's been pulled too high. What's frustrating is that it isn't a complication. The surgery can go flawlessly and still produce it, because somebody planned too much lift.

We'd rather err the other way. On most women a gentle rise towards the outer end looks right; on most men the brow is best left lower and flatter, because a pronounced arch can tip the face towards looking feminine. Either way, the aim is "rested", never "surprised".

Brow lift before and after photos, at rest

Brows are easy to cheat in photos: raise them a fraction and the "before" looks better than it is. Ours are taken with the forehead fully relaxed, both times, so the comparison is honest. In the brow lift before and after pairs in the gallery above, watch the tail of the eyebrow rather than the middle, since that's where most of the lift should show. If a brow looks arched or startled, it's been taken too far.

When one brow sits lower

It's very normal for one eyebrow to sit lower than the other, and the eye under it can look smaller as a result. Each side can be lifted by a slightly different amount, which usually evens things up nicely, even if perfect symmetry is out of reach for anyone.

As for the lines across the forehead, a lot of them soften once the brow no longer needs propping up. The vertical frown lines between the eyebrows are a different story. Surgery helps those only a little; Botox tends to do more.

Eyebrow lift for men

Men's brows normally sit lower and straighter, and we keep them that way. The point of an eyebrow lift for men is to lose the heavy, tired look, not to create an arch. Thinning hair changes where cuts can hide, so it's worth telling us about, and in a fair number of men a temple lift on its own does the job.

What about Botox?

A few well-placed units can give the brow a small lift for a few months by relaxing the muscles that drag it down. For a mild drop that's a perfectly reasonable thing to try first, and it costs a fraction of surgery. It doesn't move anything, though, so for a properly heavy brow it won't be enough. Quite a few of our patients had a year or two of Botox before booking a brow lift in Turkey.

Brow lift cost in Turkey

Our list puts a brow lift in Turkey at €2,300, a temple lift the same, and a forehead lift €2,800. That covers the operation, anaesthesia and your night in hospital, along with airport pick-ups and a translator, and we stay in touch by video for a year. The table above shows typical brow lift prices elsewhere, but honestly, the bigger risk to your wallet is paying for the wrong operation. Make sure whoever quotes you a brow lift price has checked your brow against your eyelid skin first. If they haven't, the price doesn't mean much yet.

Scars, hair and the nerve to respect

With the endoscopic and temple techniques, the cuts are short and buried in the hair, and once healed they're hard to find even if you go looking. The forehead lift leaves a longer line further back, which most people's hair covers. Tell us if your hair is thin on top or always combed straight back, since that affects where a scar can hide.

Your scalp may feel numb or itchy behind the cuts for two to four months while small nerves wake up again. The nerve that matters more is the frontal branch of the facial nerve. It passes through the temple, and it's what lifts your eyebrows. Surgeons who do this regularly know exactly where it lies. Temporary weakness, where one brow won't lift fully for a while, is uncommon and usually recovers.

Recovery after a brow lift

You'll spend one night in hospital and about six in Istanbul altogether. Swelling and some bruising are normal, and they have a habit of drifting down towards the eyes over the first few days, so don't be alarmed if your eyelids look puffier on the third day than the first. Sleeping propped up helps.

Most of it has gone within a week or two. Light activity usually comes back somewhere around day seven to ten, and we check you before you fly at about a week. Allow four to six weeks before you feel completely back to normal, with scalp feeling still improving after that.

Hair can usually be washed gently after a few days, when we say so. Give hot dryers, straighteners and tight ponytails a miss for a couple of weeks, and hold off on colouring for about a month.

Combining it with other surgery

The most common pairing by far is a brow lift with upper eyelid surgery, for people who have both a low brow and some loose lid skin. If what you really want is a lifted, almond outer corner to the eye, that's a different operation, the fox eye lift. For a bigger refresh, our list has a mid-face lift with temple and brow lift in one session at €5,900, and some people fold a brow lift into a facelift.

Is it right for you?

Most people asking about a brow lift in Turkey are in their forties to sixties, though age decides less than the face does. If your brow has genuinely dropped (confirmed by someone looking at it in person, not just a photo), you're in good health and you can stay off cigarettes for a few weeks around surgery, you're probably a candidate. The people happiest afterwards are almost always the ones who wanted to look less tired rather than transformed.

How long it lasts

Expect eight to ten years from a brow lift, with your face carrying on ageing in the background as it would anyway. In our experience, long-term happiness has less to do with technique than with two early calls: was the brow really the problem, and was the lift kept modest?

Will anyone notice?

Usually not, if it's been planned well. What people tend to say is that you look less tired, or ask whether you've been on holiday. The giveaway is a brow that's gone too high, which is exactly what a modest plan avoids. Most patients find they've stopped frowning without meaning to, and that changes how relaxed the whole face looks. Only when friends see your before and after side by side do most of them work out what changed.