Beard care can be a maze of confusing and contradicting information, so it can be hard to know what product to use, at what time and how often. You’re probably wondering what’s the deal with a beard grooming routine, is it all the important?
In this guide we breakdown all the info you need to keep your glorious beard healthy at all year long.
Washing and Hydration
Just like the hair on your head, your beard needs regular washing to stay clean and healthy. However, using regular shampoo strips away the natural oils from your beard, leading to dryness and irritation. Below is a simple beard washing guide.
Beard Washing & Conditioning
To wash your facial fur, wet your beard with warm water and apply a pea sized portion of beard wash. A lot of beard washes have a high lather concentrate, meaning that a small amount will produce enough soap to wash your entire beard. If you have a longer beard, you may not slightly more.
Once you’ve ran the product through your beard and exfoliated all the areas beneath the skin, rinse off with warm water (warm water opens the pores and is an essential step). Next use a beard conditioner for extra hydration. The beard wash stripped out all the grime and dirt build up, but you need a conditioning product to restore the softness back into your beard. Like the beard wash, use a small amount and pass through your glorious beard. Once you’ve covered all the areas in your beard, rinse out.
Drying Your Beard
Drying your beard is an important step in the grooming routine. Pat dry your beard if you have a medium to short length beard. Don’t try to vigorously dry it and as you can cause your beard to break and can irritate the skin underneath. For longer beards use a dedicated beard straightener on a low heat and pass through your beard slowly. The benefit of a straightener is that you get a sharp looking beard immediately as the heat helps the hair fall into place naturally.
Lastly if you suffer from beardruff or skin irritation, we recommend finishing off the beard grooming routine with a beard butter in the morning for a few days in a row. This will help to maintain the moisture and maintain a healthy beard environment throughout the day. After this, you can swap to using it only as needed.
If you don’t have beard butter you can use a beard oil as a backup alternative. This will provide a similar effect although, the moisturisation won’t be as deep and won’t last as long as a beard butter.
Grooming
To have a consistently sharper looking beard, there are several ways to go about it. We’ve broken these down into trimming and beard brushing.
Beard Brushes and Combs
Get yourself a beard brush as it helps to make the beard look tidy and well put together, but also, when used in combination with a product, it helps to spread this more evenly than your fingers can. As the board bristles reach deep onto the skin layer you spread around product at a much deeper rate getting to the root of the follicle. Plus, the soft bristles won’t catch any strands as it is soft and goes with your facial hair. We always recommend a good boar bristle brush as part of your grooming kit.
Wooden beard combs are good for styling. You can get a much tidier style and look from using a good wooden beard comb. Try and avoid plastic comb as they create static and leaves your beard looking frizzy. Wood is a negatively charged material similar to hair which smooths hair at the base level (cuticle). Beard combs are great for detangling hair and knots build up over time. Combing this using a beard balm for a longer lasting hold and added volume.
Trimming
Weekly trimming helps with removing split ends in your beard. Split ends are good to avoid as they can travel further up the beard and make the hair strand break off much closer to the root. Trimming these helps stop this. You don’t need to trim a whole lot, just at the ends. Consult your barber professional if you’re not sure where to begin.
Shave below the neckline for a tidier beard. Generally, the beard neckline is 2 fingers above the Adams apple. Having a sharp neckline draws, more attention to the glorious beard you’ve been growing and gives you a stronger and fuller appearance.
Beard Growth
There is a couple of ways to improve your beard growth if you’re struggling to grow a thick and full beard. You can do it naturally by being disciplined and having a biotin focused diet. This can improve the rate of growth of your beard. The main foods that are rich in biotin are eggs, cooked chicken or beef liver and legumes to name a few
To get the benefits naturally you could eat one of the following each day:
- 75 grams of cooked Chicken/Beef liver – Contains 30 mcg of Biotin
- 3 cooked eggs daily – Contains 30 mcg of Biotin
- 168g of legumes (peas, beans and lentils) – Contains 30 mcg of Biotin
Whether you’re opting in for the diet or supplement solution, this does not replace a healthy beard grooming routine. If you don’t have one, then your beard may suffer from common bear pitfalls such as bearddruff and skin irritation.
Summary
By following our guide, you will set yourself up for success and avoid the many common beard issues. To come up with the guide, we’ve done extensive research, consulted expert barbers in the industry and completed extensive testing on our own beards.
Our goal is to give you the answers right away and save you the time and effort from trial and error. If you’re unsure about your beard journey or if you’re beard routine is right for you, reach out to our team via email or phone. We’ll help guide you to reach your beard goals. No sales pitch, no marketing scheme, just reliable and reputable advice from beardsmen in the industry.
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