A full, luxurious beard makes an immediate statement. But if it’s not properly groomed, it may not be the one you want. Fear not—there are a few simple tricks you can draw on to help you figure out how best to wear your facial hair. A beard shape that offsets or accentuates your facial features will help create a look that's both masculine and mature. Once you've decided on a suitable style, you can maintain it by keeping it trimmed to a neat length and periodically touching up key areas like your sideburns, neckline, and cheeks.
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| Best ways to trim your beard |
1 Comb out your beard.
Run a fine-toothed beard comb or small hairbrush with flexible bristles through your facial hair from cheek to chin. Stroke the hair outward, away from your face, so that it all stands up in one direction. This will give you a better sense of how long your beard actually is and also make it easier to prune without making costly mistakes. Daily combing is necessary to identify areas that need trimming, prevent tangles, and redistribute natural oils. Keeping your beard brushed out is also a useful way to create the appearance of added volume, since it gets the hairs fluffed up nicely.
2 Use a beard trimmer to control how much you take off.
Glide the head of the trimmer over your face slowly, using light pressure. If your goal is to thin out a bushy beard, use upward strokes, so that the blades of the trimmer cut square across the hairs. If you'd rather preserve more of the bulk you've been so committed to growing, move the trimmer downward in the same direction that the hair lays naturally. Set the guard to about a 3 initially (which is usually somewhere around 9mm) and switch to a lower setting if you want to go shorter. That way, you can avoid accidentally shaving too much at once. Beard trimmers offer a more customizable trimming experience because of their ability to cut hair to a consistent length with every pass, unlike scissors, which force you hack away at tufts piece by piece.
3 Work from the outside in.
Start by buzzing both cheeks until you strike the desired balance between volume and tidiness. Once the sides look good, move the trimmer inward and go over your chin and mustache area. Double check that both sections are equally full, and that both halves of your face match.
Most men's facial hair tends to be thicker around the goatee, so starting with the cheeks helps ensure that your beard comes out even without having to go shorter on the sides than you'd like.
4 Create transition with your sideburns.
Sideburns are tricky since they can be treated as either an extension of your beard or your head hair. Assuming that your head hair and facial hair are approximately the same lengths, you can let what's up top flow seamlessly into what's underneath. If one is significantly longer than the other, try fading your sideburns using increasingly smaller guards so that the difference isn't too jarring.
For extremely short hairstyles like buzz cuts and shiny bald domes, blend your sideburns until they disappear around the top of your ear.
Longer locks are a little simpler. Just keep your sideburns clean and neat, then leave everything above and below your ears as shaggy as you please.
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