Your nostrils flare when you sing because your facial muscles are physically connected to your throat and voice box, and your body activates them to open up your airway and prepare your vocal folds for sound. It’s not a quirk or a bad habit. In most cases, it’s a sign that your body is doing exactly what trained singers deliberately learn to do.
The Muscles Behind the Flare
The main muscle responsible is the alar part of the nasalis, the largest muscle in your nose. It has two sections that do opposite things: one compresses your nostrils, and the other pulls them open, creating that visible flare. But it doesn’t work alone. A muscle running from beside your nose up toward your eye socket lifts both your upper lip and the wing of your nostril, which is why flaring sometimes gives your face a slightly intense or even scornful look. A small muscle between your eyebrows also chips in to help widen the nostrils, and the muscles in your cheeks that you use to smile can activate as well, raising your cheekbones without necessarily making you grin.
This cluster of muscles firing together creates what researchers call the “singer’s facial expression.” You can see it clearly in photos and videos of professional opera singers, and it’s so consistent that a research team specifically studied why classical singers seem to spread their nostrils and raise their cheeks before they even start a phrase.
How It Helps Your Breathing
Flaring your nostrils makes a measurable difference in how easily air moves through your body. Voluntary nostril flaring reduces nasal resistance by about 29%, and when your mouth is closed, it can change your total airway resistance by roughly 21%. That’s a significant drop. For singers who need to take quick, deep breaths between phrases, less resistance means more air, faster.
Even when you’re singing with your mouth open, the nasal passages still play a role in airflow. Reducing resistance anywhere in the upper airway helps your respiratory system work more efficiently, which is exactly what your body needs when it’s managing the steady, controlled exhalation that singing demands.
The Connection to Your Voice Box
The most interesting finding is that your nasal muscles aren’t just helping you breathe. They appear to have a direct neurological link to your larynx. When classical singers adopt this flared, lifted facial expression, researchers found that their pharynx (the space behind your mouth) and their glottis (the opening between the vocal folds) both widened in response.
This widening helps singers avoid what voice teachers call a “hard glottal attack,” which is that harsh, punchy sound you get when your vocal folds slam together too forcefully at the start of a note. Instead, the open configuration encourages a gentler, less pressed quality of sound. It also seems to help with producing head voice or mixed register, where the vocal folds come together with lighter contact, giving you access to higher notes without strain.
This is why voice teachers have been instinctively coaching this behavior for generations, even without knowing the biomechanics. Common instructions include “smell the scent of a flower,” “think of something burning,” “imagine the beginning of a yawn,” or “use an inner smile.” All of these cues naturally activate the same nasal and facial muscles, widening the nostrils and lifting the cheeks, which in turn opens up the throat.
What It Does to Your Sound
Your nasal cavity acts as a resonating chamber, and its resonant frequencies change depending on how open or closed your nostrils are. Spectral components of your voice that line up with these resonances get amplified. So the degree of nostril opening can subtly shape your tone. The nasal cavity also has a large, soft surface area that absorbs sound and dampens certain frequencies, which broadens the character of your lowest vocal resonance. This is part of why nasal resonance gives a voice warmth and richness rather than a thin, pinched quality.
There’s a difference, though, between healthy nasal resonance and a nasal tone. If too much air is escaping through your nose because your soft palate isn’t lifting properly, the sound becomes honky and thin. Nostril flaring itself doesn’t cause this problem. In fact, the facial muscles involved in flaring tend to work alongside soft palate elevation, not against it.
When Flaring Might Signal a Problem
If your nostril flaring is accompanied by visible tension in your neck, jaw clenching, or a strained sound, it could be part of a broader pattern of excess tension rather than efficient technique. The key distinction is whether the flaring feels effortful or whether it happens naturally. Singers who are pushing too hard for volume or straining for high notes sometimes recruit every muscle they can, including the nasal muscles, as part of a general bracing pattern. In that case, the flaring is a symptom, not the cause.
If you’re concerned about a nasal tone rather than the physical flaring itself, a few simple exercises can help you learn to direct airflow away from your nose. Practicing scales on a hard “gah” sound naturally lifts the back of your tongue to contact your soft palate, training it to close off the nasal passage when you want a more forward, resonant tone. Imagining a ping-pong ball sitting in the back of your mouth can help you feel what a raised soft palate is like. Lip trills and humming are also useful warmups because they encourage steady airflow and relaxed facial muscles.
Why You Shouldn’t Try to Stop It
For most singers, nostril flaring is a feature, not a bug. Professional classical singers do it deliberately. Pop and musical theater singers often do it unconsciously when they’re singing well. The facial expression connects to real, measurable changes in your airway, your throat, and how your vocal folds behave. Trying to suppress it can actually make your singing worse by cutting off a natural mechanism your body uses to keep your voice open and free.
If you watch recordings of yourself and notice the flaring, the most useful response is to check whether it’s happening alongside good sound or alongside strain. If your tone is clear and your throat feels open, your nostrils are doing their job. If you’re tight and pushing, the fix isn’t in your nose. It’s in your breath support and the tension patterns further down in your body.