Norwood–Hamilton · Stage VII
Norwood 7 (VII)
The most extensive stage. A narrow, sparse horseshoe. Only the wreath remains.
No account needed, and nothing is stored.
What it looks like
A thin wreath of hair around the sides and back, often sparse enough that scalp shows through the remaining band. The entire top is bare. There is no bridge, no midline hairline, no vertex island. From the front it reads as a high bare forehead into a bare crown in one plane.
Typical measurements
Face-normalised units: H is glabella to chin, so the numbers do not depend on the phone or the distance. These are the anchors the pipeline uses; they are not a diagnosis.
- Mid-frontal height
- unmeasurable
- Temple bald-column share
- 1.00
- Vertex vs occipital
- ≈ 0.04
- Scalp loss-area
- ≈ 0.82
Norwood VII is the end of the androgenetic map he drew, not the end of hair. The occipital and parietal fringe is the region least sensitive to androgens, which is why it is still there, and why transplant surgeons harvest from it. Loss-area at this grade is about 0.82 in Xi et al. 2025. The engine will not call VII on confluence alone; it wants frontal class at the top, vertex class at the bottom, and an area at or above about 0.72 so that a shiny VI does not get promoted.
If the wreath itself is patchy or the back photo is thin, something else may be going on: the occipital reference is no longer a reference. The report already downgrades confidence when the back-of-head density is unreliable. That is a feature. A VII with a weak reference is a VII with an asterisk, which is more honest than a clean roman numeral.
A note on what this stage is for, on this site: a number you can keep, re-run, and show. It is not a prognosis or a treatment plan. The levers in the paid report are graded against published evidence; they are not a prescription. For VII in particular, the useful document is the measurement sheet a clinician can read.
How it gets mixed up
VII is not “bald”. It is the Norwood horseshoe at its tightest. Complete loss including the occipital wreath is outside this scale (diffuse unpatterned, alopecia areata totalis, and other non-androgenetic patterns).
How to get your number
Five photos (front, left, right, crown, back), a sixty-second history, about three minutes. The report costs $7, needs no account, and stores nothing. You get the roman stage, a continuous index, a genetic vs. environmental split, levers ranked by evidence, 5- and 10-year paths, and a signed link. Look at a sample report first. Details of the geometry and the papers behind the anchors: Method & sources. The rest of the scale: Norwood I–VII.
FAQ
Is Norwood 7 completely bald?
No. VII keeps a sparse horseshoe of hair on the sides and back. Complete loss of that wreath is not a Norwood stage; it is a different pattern and needs a different work-up.
Why does the loss-area stop around 0.82, not 1.0?
Because the scale is describing patterned loss that spares the occipital fringe. A ratio of 1.0 would mean no hair left on the scalp at all, which is not androgenetic pattern baldness as Norwood drew it.
norwood.fyi is an informational tool, not a medical device, and not a substitute for a dermatologist. Staging between adjacent Norwood grades has about 65–78% agreement even among experts; the report shows its confidence and the measurements behind it.