Want a Better Beard? Follow These 7 Grooming Tips!

Beards have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity as of late. Today, we’ll talk about seven of our best beard grooming tips to make sure your beard is always looking its best.

Beards are being worn by gentlemen who favor all varieties of dressing styles, including our beloved classic style. But, we recognize that beards were not a common hallmark of classic style during the Golden Age of Menswear, as most gentlemen of style from that era were clean-shaven or wore mustaches.

Some men wore beards at this time, and they made their beards work within the realm of classic style, using the same grooming tips that we’ll be sharing with you today, which will help you emphasize a neat appearance, sleek lines, clean texture, and timeless style to ensure your beard looks at home with the rest of your classic ensemble.

If need to grow a beard, I’ll walk you through how to grow facial hair and beards in a separate guide.

1. Wash Well

As is the case with most grooming regimens, a clean and hygienic approach is the best place to start. Regular washing of your beard offers numerous benefits that will improve its look and feel at every stage.

Trust us, just wetting your beard while you shower won’t achieve very much. If you’re just starting to grow a beard, regular washing can help exfoliate the skin, reducing irritation in that area as your beard develops. Good exfoliation while washing is also key if you have a shorter beard to keep your skin looking healthy, clean, and firm.

For medium and long beards, regular washing is essential to maintain cleanliness. No matter how smooth your beard hairs might be, just running water through it won’t remove contaminants like excess oils, grease, dust, and other detritus.

Remember that facial hair is uniquely structured compared to your head hair, so a cleanser designed for the hair on the top of your head might make the hair on your face flaky, brittle, and generally dried out.

As for how often to wash your beard, like shampooing your head hair, it varies based on your body chemistry, climate, and personal habits. We recommend initially washing your beard every two or three days. If your beard starts to dry out, you should wash it less, but if it feels or looks greasy, you should wash them more often.

2. Comb & Brush Your Beard

Just like combing your hair keeps it looking great, combing your beard will do the same. But combing your beard might not come as naturally as combing your hair.

If you have a short beard, quickly running a comb through will help your hairs lay flat and will help encourage it to grow in the desired direction. For longer beards, combs will help with detangling and smoothing. So, move more slowly, carefully loosening any snags.

With full or thick beards, you’ll need to both fluff your beard by combing up and away from your face and then shape it according to your desires. Divide your beard into sections and layers. This will help you ensure that you comb everything.

You will likely need to comb your beard daily – usually when you get up in the morning like your hair – and possibly multiple times a day based on habits, hair texture, and styling. But, especially with longer beards, take your time and come slowly and carefully to avoid excessive pulling, or this experience can get very painful very quickly.

Whether you need to regularly brush your hair depends on your hair texture. But, basically, every type of beard here will benefit from brushing, provided that it is long enough. Brushing redistributes natural oils evenly, and reduces the formation of tangles. It softens and volumizes your beard and trains your beard by encouraging desired growth patterns.

Note that short beards may require only a cursory brushing or no brushing at all. And excessive brushing could irritate your skin. It’s even possible to overbrush long beards. A telltale sign is split ends. If your beard requires brushing, expect to do it at least daily, usually in the morning and possibly at night before you go to bed. Experiment to find a schedule that suits you and your beard.

As with most things in life, the right tools make the job easier. So, invest in a designated beard comb with two teeth sizes and a natural hair beard brush. Horse hair is a favor because the stiff bristles exfoliate your skin while taming your beard. You can also make your combing and brushing go further by applying additional grooming items directly onto your brush or comb, like oils or lotions.

3. Perfect Your Products

Because of its unique makeup and texture, your beard here benefits from specialty cleansers and tools as well as additional grooming products like oils, creams, butters, and balms. It can feel very overwhelming when grooming your beard because it seems as though you’ll need to invest in an entire salon worth of products to care for it.

A few basic items geared to the particular vital needs of your facial hair will be sufficient, and of course, you can add more products if desired.

Everyone will benefit from a beard shampoo and conditioner, a quality trimmer, and a beard brush. And most of you, especially if you have longer and drier beards, should also consider beard oil, beard balm, and a beard comb.

For specific brand recommendations to get you started, take a look at our 12 Best Beard Grooming Products guide. You can find even more product recommendations and the product and tools section of our beard care and grooming guide. It’s an extensive resource packed with dozens of suggestions that includes all the above-mentioned items plus additional products and tools like waxes, scissors, and hair dryers.

4. Timely Trimming and Conscientious Cutting 

If you want to grow a long, thick beard, allowing it to grow totally wild and free won’t produce a very classic look. Carefully curating your beard with regular trimming and attentive cutting will ensure that your beard looks full and healthy. This will also help your beard grow evenly during its initial stages, so it appears neat and well kept once it reaches your desired length, however long that might be.

Growing accustomed to trimming your beard early on will help to ensure that you avoid the appearance of looking patchy or uneven, and to train your beard by setting boundaries and cultivating growth in the desired areas. Trimming and cutting will also remove any split frazzled, and dried-out hairs.

You’ll also develop a knack for proper edge care and maintenance, specifically attending to the border lines of your beard like the transition edges between your cheeks and neck or the horizontal vertical edge of your beard itself.

These lines make a big difference, especially on full beards. Note the difference between the trimmed vertical line on the left and an untrimmed vertical line on the right. And here, you see the effect of a well-trimmed horizontal line.

In general, one of the main distinguishing features of a classically-styled beard will be the precise attention to neat lines. Just look at the difference clean lines make in Leonardo DiCaprio’s beard in “Django Unchained” and “The Revenant.”

Of course, too much artifice can be just as distracting as an overly unnatural look. Razor-sharp, artificial edges can be distracting and off-putting. Finding the right balance between clean and natural edges will depend largely on your personal style and taste. To help you achieve a timeless and classic look, take advantage of our guide to beard trimming.

Here’s a tip for beard trimming that we found extremely helpful: don’t get caught up in trying to make every single edge around your cheeks or lips match perfectly. Not only is it largely a waste of time, it probably won’t even look right. Just like a perfectly symmetrical face looks strange and unnerving so too does a symmetrically styled beard.

So, just do the best that you reasonably can. I know that any little imperfections will only make your beard look more natural. Speaking of looking natural, our next step concerns a very particular and very easy-to-get-wrong line on your beard.

5. Fantastically Fade Your Neat Neckline

The neckline has become notorious in the beard world. That is because so many men are terrified of looking like the infamous neckbeard, reviled for his unkempt and scraggly neck hairs. 

Unfortunately, the fear of looking like a neckbeard has driven some men to cut their beards under their chin too high. Producing an unnatural line that may look acceptable from the front but appears odd at every other angle.

Fortunately, this issue is relatively easy to fix. Just let your beard hair grow back in and opt for a more natural line. How do you achieve this? Ideally, if you have a full beard, your neckline will curve down from your ear to just above your Adam’s apple and then back up to the other ear.

To find your neckline, stick out your index and middle fingers and place them under your neck so that your middle finger is touching your Adam’s apple. Imagine a curving line that runs from where your index finger rests under your chin until it intersects with the lines vertically running down from your sideburns.

Shave anything below this imaginary curving line. However you shave it, don’t make your natural neckline look unnatural by shaving in a hard and sharp edge. This look might be sporty and youthful, but it isn’t very classic. Instead, fade your neckline to ensure smooth, organic transition from skin to beard.

To fade your neckline, you’ll need a trimmer with length guards. Start with one guard down from the guard for your overall beard length. Trim the hair about an inch above your neckline, then go down one more guide and trim a half-inch above your neckline. While trimming, scoop your trimmer upwards to create a more natural line that is easier to blend.

This process takes practice. But, eventually, you’ll learn how to craft a fade.

To get the job done right, make sure you’re using the right tools for general trimming and fading your lines. You’ll definitely need a beard brush or comb and a quality electric clipper. For medium and long beards, you also want a pair of beard-trimming scissors. This will help snap away any stray hairs.

Don’t worry; it may feel like it, but the techniques we’ve suggested won’t require going to barber college to master, and learning these skills will allow you to take your beard to the next level.

6. Start a Styling Sensation

Once you’ve mastered the basics of beard maintenance, you can experiment with beard styling to really add personality to your look. There are dozens of facial hair styles you can adopt and limitless ways to style them. Taking advantage of the quality products, perfect tools, and careful know-how that we’ve already covered today, you’ll be able to get a great beard.

Of course, how you style your beard is entirely up to you and could be as simple as regular brushing to ensure a gently pointed end or as complex as a perfectly quaffed and forked beard that makes Rex Ingram jealous. Of course, as with hairstyles, not all beards will necessarily suit all face shapes.

7. Investigate Expert Opinions 

Seek out people that know. Your local barber is a trained professional who can guide you at every step of your beard journey. Whether you’ve just started growing a beard or need to determine particular qualities of different varieties of waterproof waxes, your barber will be able to build upon the tips that we’ve shared with you today and help apply our advice to your particular situation.

Of course, not all barbers are well-versed in the minutia of beard care, so don’t be afraid to seek out a second opinion from barbers who have more experience with beards.

Conclusion

While they may not have been common during the Golden Age of Menswear, we hope inspired you to try out beards in your classic style journey. We know that your beard will look great. So, whatever stage of beard bearing or beard building you’re at, we hope you enjoyed our tips today.

Which grooming tips are essential to you? Let us know in the comments below.

Outfit Rundown

How have I employed my classically styled beard with my outfit? Well, let’s find out.

So, as I typically do, I keep my beard pretty short. Lines are not too sharp or angled, but I’m pairing that with my outfit of dark denim, brown dress shoes, Fort Belvedere socks, a green vest, and my casual button-down shirt. Check out the Fort Belvedere shop for socks like these.