People come in asking for facial balancing, and almost nobody asks about their temples.
The temples are the base that holds the upper face up. As we age they hollow, and most people never register it happening. What they register is that something looks off, and they assume the answer is cheeks.
That assumption is where a lot of overfilled faces come from. If you keep chasing lift with filler in the cheekbones while the temples sit empty, you drift toward the Maleficent look: cheekbones that read too high and too sharp, and a face that no longer quite looks like the person's own. The cheek was never the problem. The support above it was.
I treat temples with Teoxane RHA 4 or Restylane Volyme. RHA 4 is my preference here, it sits beautifully in the temple. For the chin and jawline I use Restylane Shaype, which is built to hold shape in areas that need definition rather than softness.
Facial balancing is assessed as a whole face. I will not treat one area in isolation if the reason it looks off is somewhere else.
Real patients treated with the DEKA Tetra CO2 protocol.
Before | 6 months after 1 treatment
Before | 8 months after 2 treatments
The three areas
The temple is the area I most often add to a plan that someone came in for something else entirely.
Hollowing here happens gradually and quietly. It pulls at the brow, narrows the upper face, and makes the outer eye area look tired in a way that no amount of work on the eye itself will fix.
Restoring the temple restores the frame. It is often the treatment that makes everything else look right, and it is almost never the one people ask for.
Best for: Temple hollowing, a narrowed upper face, brow support
Products: Teoxane RHA 4 (my preference here) or Restylane Volyme
The chin sets the proportion of the lower face. A chin that is short or recessed changes how the whole profile reads, and it affects how the jawline reads with it.
I use Restylane Shaype here. It holds its shape, which is what this area needs. Softer products do not project the way a chin has to.
Best for: Profile balance, chin projection, lower face proportion
Product: Restylane Shaype
The jawline is definition rather than volume. Done with restraint, it sharpens the line between the face and the neck.
Done heavily, it widens the lower face, which is usually the opposite of what someone came in for. I dose this area carefully for that reason, and often the more useful conversation is whether masseter treatment belongs in the plan instead.
Best for: Jawline definition and a cleaner transition to the neck
Product: Restylane Shaype
Note: Often assessed alongside masseter slimming
If you bring me a concern about one area, I will look at the whole face before I agree the concern is where you think it is.
That is not me upselling. It is the opposite. Quite often the honest answer is that treating the area you pointed at would make things worse, and that a smaller amount somewhere else does what you actually wanted.
The temples are the clearest example of this, which is why they lead this page.