Growing a beard. Tips and tricks, please!
A huge thank you to everyone who responded to my hair thinning post.
Here’s where I landed:
Minoxidil is toxic to dogs and I’ve got a little fur buddy, and finasteride prevents me from donating blood and platelets, and that’s a new thing for me that I don’t want to give up. So, bald it is! I plan on shaving my head this coming summer.
In the eventual absence of hair on my head though, I’d like to grow more on my face and keep it longer — something that’ll require actual grooming and upkeep. I’ve had a beard for a long time now, but I keep it quite short.
So, what are all of my do’s and don’ts/tips and tricks for growing (and maintaining) a glorious beard?
Also, I want this to be beneficial to ANYONE looking for beard info, so feel free to give short beard tips too.
The best rule I've ever seen is:
Find your adam's apple, cut your beard evenly from a point two fingers above your adam's apple.
This will prevent you from going too short into weird cheek beard territory, and too long into neck beard territory.
My other tip is accept the beard you are given. If you have patchy areas, find a beard style that doesn't involve those areas.
An alternative to finding the neckline would be to tilt your head forward until there's crease between your head and neck.
This natural crease is where I set my neckline.
Mutton chops, soul patch, and a moustache, perhaps?
Have you ever considered a mustache only ?
I ruled it out for a long time until I happenstance grew one while I was on a trip where I couldn’t shave.
It’s hard to wait out the “ugly” in between phase of haircuts, but you may be rewarded with a look you like if you do.
Do you have any suggestions for how to replicate the length you describe if you don't have an Adam's apple?
Note: this is completely unscientific and is something I just came up with by looking in my mirror just now. Might not work for everyone, depending on handsize and proportions and whatnot.
I was curious so I checked just now and this seems about right.
It has been a while since I've had a shorter beard, but I think I did mostly the same when it was close to my face. Here's a stream of consciousness brain dump of beard related things!
Washing
It's obviously important to wash your beard, but like your hair, if you overwash you're going to strip off the natural oils that protect your hair. I try to wash my beard about 2 - 3 times per week, and I do so with a gentle soap. I still wash my face, usually morning and night, but I just don't do the bearded areas.
Moisturizer / Balm / Oil
There are so many options and what you do is going to depend on what you like, but I recommend trying each of these at least once
And then picking the one that you like. I use a beard balm because I felt like beard oil felt, well, oily, butter felt like it didn't do much, and the leave-in felt like it was a coating on my face. The one I'm currently using is "Viking Revolution Cedar and Pine".
Scents
Find something that both you and your husband like the smell of. I had a few different products that my wife just didn't like the smell of, and then she got me one that I didn't like the smell of. You have to find something good for both of you, because you both have to smell it. I know this seems obvious, but it has eluded several other of my friends when they were starting out.
Brush
I recommend getting a good quality boar hair brush. There's something quite relaxing about brushing out your beard
Trimming and Shaving
I trim and shape my beard fairly frequently. Sometimes it's as simple as getting errant beard hairs into a good position; sometimes it's getting rid of volume, sometimes it's changing the style. I have a good set of trimmers - the same ones I use for my hair - and a good set of scissors, and a good wooden comb. My beard is kind of wiry, so I use a comb with bigger gaps.
My advice for trimming is to just pick a shape, and then cut your beard into that general shape. I
You probably still want good shaving peripherals as well. I still shave my neck because I think there should be some kind of line between my body hair and my beard.
I probably have more info, but I have to take my son to ball hockey!
Nice post; I would like to add some things.
Maybe going against the grain here a little bit but here's my advice.
Washing
I wash my beard every time I wash my hear (2-3 times a week).
Try whatever works for you but if I wash too much the skin will get dry and flaky. If I wash too little the beard will become greasy and I get acne.
Moisturizer/balm/oils
When I started out with my beard I used all the products, wax in my 'stache, scented balms and oils in my beard.
Now I've cut back on all the products and just smear some all purpose tea tree moisturizer on my face and beard.
I've found that the products don't add any real benefit to my beard.
Scents
I try to use products without a significant scent. I reserve this for colognes/perfumes/eau de toilette.
Scents should be applied to parts of your body that produce some heat and moisture. For example the inner part of your elbow or in your neck.
When picking a scent make sure you like it but also ensure your partner (or partner to be) likes it.
Brush
As mentioned in the thread, a good brush with thick bristles will keep your beard tamed.
Trimming/Shaving
I have a curl in my beard if I grow it out past 2.5 cm (1" in freedom units). So I keep it below that, I've tried growing it out beyond the curl but I don't like the look.
I trim my beard about once every month.
I trim the edges and use a trimmer for my 'stache every week when I do my "everything shower".
Deciding the neckline is an important part of trimming.
I define this by tilting my head forward until there's a crease in my neck, this is where I trim my beard.
Hello again, we must be on some sort of shared wavelength, because after your post about hair I thought, "hmm, maybe this guy would be interested in my guide..."
I don't have a final version of my "how to grow a beard" guide, but your first post motivated me to possibly DM you, and your second post has finally motivated me to materialize it. I myself have been growing my beard now for about 6 months, this is the second time I've given a "long" beard a try, here are my suggestions:
Let it grow. cue Frozen song. Growing a beard takes patience. The most frustrating thing is that even though beard hair is the fastest growing hair on the human body, watching it grow can feel like watching paint dry. So first things first, let it grow for as long (time wise, and lengthwise) as you can before you decide to cut it. *the amount of time it takes you to grow a beard to X length varies from person to person so I won't give you a recommended time to grow it, length matters more than time.
Distract yourself by finding images of facial hair that you like. This is a time for you to really experiment and grab and save anything that you like. You don't need to know why you like it, you don't need to know if it fits your face shape, or if you have the same hair type, or anything else. This phase is really just to get ideas of what you like aesthetically. You may find out from this practice that you really like mustaches, for example. This vision board and mood board can provide distraction from waiting for your hair to grow, but also motivation for you to continue when you inevitably want to call it quits.
Power through awkward phases. Change is difficult. We also really hate the in-between phase, because it can often look ugly, but also annoy us in others ways. This makes it difficult to see past the present and hold out for the future. Early beards can be itchy. Early beards can look scraggly or patchy or a different color due to density. I encourage you to just let the hair grow. Why do I not encourage you to cut at all at this stage? Because beards are also complicated. At least from my own experience with growing a mustache recently, I learned that certain things affect the mustache that I didn't expect to. For example, cutting hair in one place (below the lip line, where I thought it didn't affect the mustache itself) actually did affect how it looked at behaved. I think the under hair was acting like velcro and helping the "mustache proper" stay in place. When I cut the hair below the mustache, it caused the mustache to become more detached, so to speak, and made it look thinner, even though I did not cut the mustache itself at all.
TL;DR- actions have consequences that are not always apparent at the time of the act, tread cautiously.
Learn about your own hair and beard. What colors are present in your beard? Do different areas of your beard seem to grow at different rates? lengths? texture? I do not know if this is true for beard hair, but for head hair, hairs know and have a terminal length. I swear the mustache hair I have that is right below the nostrils grows excruciatingly slowly, and seems to not really grow past a certain length (I am trying to grow it out long enough to be able to style it away from my mouth more, because despite my efforts, it does get messy while eating). This could be a me thing, I don't know, but that's why you should get to know your own facial hair dynamics. I think it's interesting to know where do your sideburns begin and your beard begin? These hairs feel different and behave differently to me. I'd actually be curious for some anecdata to see if people notice any patterns in their facial hair growth. Why is this important? Because this will help dictate how you groom the hair in those areas, and overall. Which leads me to my next point...
Do not cut wet hair. Beard hair is generally textured, and this degree of texture is along a spectrum and can vary even within the beard. But in general, anyone with curly hair knows the disasters of someone cutting curly hair while wet or someone who is inexperienced cutting curly hair, wet or dry. Hair behaves very differently when it's wet vs. when it's dry, and with textured hair, this can give you false visualizations of what your facial hair looks like. The biggest issue is that there is often added length when wet, and so when you cut it if you have not accounted for that, you will often have a much shorter result when dry.
Experiment and explore with beard shapes and styles. Your face and your style are unique. Hopefully, from exercise 2, you have some idea of what you like in facial hair. Try to narrow down the styles you like that you also want to try on yourself. Again, don't get lost in the details of "is this style good for a round face? and do I have a round face?" Just try to go with your gut of "I like this". Once you have done that, whether you decide to go to a barber* or do it yourself or have your partner help you, try to find pictures of the beards you like at various angles and use these as references to guide the shaping on your face. This is I think the most difficult part of shaping. It's both realizing what the overall shape is or effect that you like, and applying this to your face. I recommend you go slowly and just try tiny trims to see how that affects the overall look of your beard and if you like it from multiple angles. Always err on the side of caution and if you mess something up often the best thing to do is just stop and take a break from it, because you are not in the right state of mind to make further decisions. A note on barbers, if you decide to go to one, like your head hair, barbers come in many different flavors, and not all of them are good at facial hair work. The one time I went to a barber to specifically work on my beard, I came out with something that could have made a great r/justfuckmyshitup. Barbers tend to work best with reference images, so hopefully you won't be shy about your inspirations and aspirations from #2 and can show those to them.
I hope you have fun with your beard, I am actually at step 6 myself, very nervous about cutting into it, but I think it's time. I'd love to get updates of your beard journey, and if you have any advice or tips for me!
**on finding beard lines. I kind of ascribe to grooming "naturally strayed hairs" vs. an overly manicured look. This should be part of your exploration process, IMO. You'll never know until you try, until that barber butchered my face, I honestly had thought of cutting it the way he did, because it looked amazing from one angle (straight on) it just looked bad from a lot of other angles. I learned a lot from that mistake.
When it comes to beards, I don't believe in do's and don'ts.
Personally, I have a very scraggly beard. I think that most men have that kind of facial hair. So if you just leave it alone and do it's own thing, as long as you don't have very splotchy hair growth, you're fine leaving it very lightly trimmed. You don't need a ton of product, and in fact, I think that as long as you keep it relatively short, you probably don't need any at all.
Perhaps the most basic advice I would give for you if you've been regularly shaving your face is to just let it out and see what happens and how much you like it. You can experiment with different looks after you've got a baseline. In any case, you need to have hair before you can try out those other looks. Ask your husband for their opinion; they have to look at your face a whole lot more than you do.
As a matter of personal opinion, I would avoid the fact that "neckbeard" has become a pejorative and embrace the look. As long as you do basic trimming, I think it actually looks a lot nicer than shaved neck. But that's very biased as I absolutely hate shaping because hair tends to grow fast and only shaving tiny patches is a lot harder than shaving the whole thing.
get a good quality beard brush and brush it a few times a day. Make sure you're exfoliating your skin and oiling / moisturizing your beard regularly.
I use a T-Outliner (Andis) for lining my hair and beard, but a shavette is also great, but I wouldn't line with a safety razor or anything else. Since you're going bald, learn how to do a simple fade for your sideburn part -- about 1" down is good. For the next inch, use a comb to pull away to get that taper and shave it. this video seems good for breaking this down. Fading a beard is fairly easy and generous.
For shorter beards, I like to line the sides and keep under my chin a little shorter so I have good definition.
Depending on where you live, it wouldn't hurt to shave it in the very near future so you have an even tan. I'd also do the summer with no beard so you have a consistent tan over your face before growing a good beard over the autumn/winter. Then if you decide it isn't for you, you won't have large lighter patches :)
Jumping on the beard brush, something like a Wav Enforcer 385 is a perfectly good straight brush for a longer beard for less than $5. There are a lot of manly beard brands selling military brushes with macho labels that are basically the same thing for as high as $20.
Beard wash, oil and balm are a good thing. I resisted for years but it made things better. I like Professor Fuzzworthy's soap bar and balm, but currently use Duke Cannon's "Best Damn Beard Oil." My preferred oil is Honest Amish unscented, but I ran out and have the Duke Cannon, which smells like citrus and redwood, but doesn't really stick in the nose. Honest Amish also partnered with a homophobic dude from Duck Dynasty, so... Make a decision there, I'm probably just gonna stick with my current Duke Cannon.
If you want a longer stache, learn to wax it and either commit to cutting back fully it or commit to growing and waxing it. If it's too short it is hard to train and, so, hard to keep out of drinks. Once it's long enough it's not even so bad without wax, mine's pushing two inchesand I can generally keep it out of food now without wax by swooping it out of the way.
do you cut your hair yourself? most people don't, they get a professional to do it. Go to a barber, it's nice, i cannot recommend it enough. I started doing it a couple years ago, don't even own a razor anymore.
I go every two to three months, so it grows out quite a bit, but then people actually see the change and i get compliments.
It's obviously not the cheapest way, but then, I don't spend a lot of money on my looks otherwise.
Another thing, as a straight man it is quite rare to get touched on the face by somebody else, especially other men. I enjoy that short moment of intimacy
I see a barber for haircuts regularly — I am definitely not skilled enough to handle things myself!
I get this. My husband’s from a culture where people, regardless of gender, kiss each other on the cheek when greeting or saying goodbye. I’m from a culture where any kiss had a romantic connotation, and a kiss involving two men was essentially verboten.
It took me a while to get comfortable with my husband’s family’s way of doing things, but I genuinely appreciate it now. It’s a nice, intimate, thoroughly non-romantic thing.
I had this weird social/confidence issue about asking for a beard trim for a while. Then I found one place that was not hyper branded something like manly man's barber shop.
So for a while, I enjoyed going to this guy for hair cut and beard trim, with single blade for the clean edge.
This allowed me to get a good idea of where the edges should be to look good.
Since moving cities, I haven't yet found another barber where I felt that comfortable.
I now just use clippers to hack something to good enough, while knowing broadly where the clean edges should be.
So my advice is to go a few times to a barber that you're comfortable with, and try to replicate as best as you can.
PS: I keep it fairly short (<10mm) now that I do it myself than when I had the barber do it. And with that, frequent enough to not need to care for oils, scents, and other products.
Like 2-3 weeks to maintain some level of respectable. I couldn't possibly maintain a daily clean shaven routine.
There is no shortage of online material for you to investigate, but I'll offer some of my experience.
Find a beard 'guy'. A good barber that knows how to shape your beard and set your beard lines - and bonus points if he teaches you how to set them. You don't need to turn it all over to a pro, but some do. I went to one about monthly for a while but mostly I DIY.
There is no shortage of product offerings. Wax, Balms, 'conditioners', No-shine scalp lotions (I never bothered), Safety razors, straight razors, balms, soaps, creams, even a silly razor on a ring called the HeadBlade that you slip over your finger for "easier" head shaving. It's kind of fun, kind of absurd depending on what you're into.
Beard oil deserves its own bullet though I think. It's good for the beard, you get a whole perfumery world opened up to you, (I like the spice & leather scents) but it also doesn't get absorbed by the follicle - so it travels. This brings me to my next couple of points.
This summer you may learn that without hair there's nowhere for the oils your scalp produces to go but down. You may find your face starting to feel oily over the course of the day. I found that a quick wipe down with a damp paper towel or washcloth on long or hot days was an easy fast fix.
The 'healthy' vs. 'clean' vs. 'smelly' spectrum. This is the crux of the learning curve. Healthy beards have oil in them. At one point I came across a beard guy who said only ever condition your beard, NEVER shampoo it. Two weeks later after what I can only imagine was an onslaught of fed-up partners demanding he help them address the smelly bearded-partners of the world he backtracked to something more reasonable/flexible.
The in-between phase. I think most beards have an awkward adolescent phase. It's the point at which the beard starts to get long enough to need some training, or product, or is just gonna look stupid for a while until it and you and it make peace with each other. It helps to know which kind of beard you're going for.
Mostly though, have fun with it. You can always shave it off unless your teenage daughter is so scarred by seeing her father's chin for the first time that you're forbidden from ever doing it again.
Am I destined to be beardless for the rest of my life?
I'm approaching 40 now, and while I can grow a full mustache and hair in the goatee area of my face, the hair on both cheeks is very patchy at best. Can that be solved? I've always wanted a beard, if nothing else, just to try it on.
How long have you tried letting your beard grow? My cheeks are also super patchy, but after 6-8 weeks it will have grown in enough that it looks like a "normal" beard. I'm 41.
I think I'll give that a shot. I never make it that far because it just ends up looking so gross to me in that interim period.
I've been growing it for about a week now, but I've also been mowing it over with a trimmer to keep everything "groomed" if you can call it that.
Yeah no guarantee that your issue is the same, but my beard definitely goes from "patchy disaster" to "normal beard" at like the 6-8 week mark. I hate every moment until then.
Not much new to add to the conversation other than beard oil is very customizable. Bulk almond or jojoba oil + essential oils = your own custom scent. I’m currently rockin’ a blend of mostly sandalwood and vanilla, plus a drop or two each of vetiver, frankincense, and cedar oils. Smells just as good at a fraction of the price, plus you can tinker with your scent which I think is super fun.