A well-groomed beard is a symbol of a manly look. Your beard will give you that look when you groom and care for it properly. You can do it by setting an appointment with a beard stylist. But it is costly.
To avoid the cost and save time most of the people used to trim beard at home. It is really a good idea. But, in the beginning, you may face some problems while trimming your beard.
It happens because you are completely new to it, don’t know where to start, and how to make the beard and look attractive.
For you, today I will give some basic tips of beard trimming at home. After reading this post, I swear, you will get an in-depth knowledge of beard trimming.
Let’s see.
What You Need
Obviously, you need some tools to trim your beard. Don’t think only a trimmer is enough for it. Yes, it is the main tool but you need some others for proper beard trimming session. You should prepare your beard for trimming and give some care after trimming.
Let’s see the tools you arrange before trimming.
- Beard wash.
- Wide teeth comb.
- Beard clipper.
- Beard trimmer.
- Scissors.
- Beard brush.
- Moisturizing beard oil
Beard Preparation for Trimming
Before trimming you should prepare your beard for it. It includes three actions, the first one is washing beard, the second one is drying it out, and the third one is to detangle it.
Washing Beard
It is a must-do task before trimming. You should clean your beard off from dirt, oil, and impurities. Because you would not get a proper trimming result from a dirty beard.
Use a beard shampoo to clean your beard. Don’t use hair shampoo or bar soap for it. Because the composition of your beard and hair is different. A beard wash or shampoo is specially made to clean and care your beard which you won’t get from a hair shampoo.
Make Your Beard Dry
Never ever trim wet beard. You must dry your beard before trimming. To do this pat your beard with a towel. It will blot the excess water from your beard. After this, wait to air dry your beard. It is the best way to make your hair dry.
If you don’t have enough time, use a blow drier for hair drying. Always use a lower temperature setting to make your hair dry. Otherwise, your beard will get damaged.
Detangle Beard
Before trimming the beard, you should detangle your beard with a wide teeth comb. If you don’t detangle it, the beard clipper won’t run through the beard smoothly.
To avoid this, comb your beard until it goes through your beard without any blockage. Hope two to three passes are enough to detangle your beard.
Tips for Beard Trimming
Now your beard is ready to trim. But the perfection of beard trimming depends on practice. If you are a beginner, you should maintain some simple steps while trimming the beard. Let’s see one by one.
Use a Beard Bib
This is not a direct part of beard trimming. But it helps you and the place you are standing for trimming from getting messy. It doesn’t cost you much and really helpful. There are black and white color beard aprons available in the market. I personally prefer black, because it doesn’t look that much dirty after several uses.
Define Beard Shape
Before using beard trimming tools, imagine the shape you want to get. It helps to use the trimming tools in the right way. And make sure your beard shape will suit your face. Maybe you could not achieve the expected look at the beginning. Don’t worry, with time everything will be fine.
Use Beard Clipper First
You need to use both beard clipper and trimmer to trim your beard. Do you know the difference between beard clipper and trimmer? Mainly beard clipper used to make beard shorten and beard trimmer used to create line and edge. I will tell you the beard trimmer task later.
Beard clipper is used to trim any kind of beard from thin to coarse. There are different clipper sizes available, you should use according to your beard length.
My favorite beard grooming tool is Ceenwes Cool 5 In 1 Mens beard trimmer and clipper. You will get both beard and trimmer in this set with an affordable price.
Start from a Side
It is OK for a beginner not to know from where to start trimming first. Some mistakenly start from the chin. Don’t do it. It could ruin your entire beard trimming session.
Start from the side of your face, any side, left or right. Comb your beard first, then start trimming from up to down. Never ever run your clipper down to up while trimming this beard portion. It could cut a bunch of beards all of a sudden.
Try to make a straight line from earlobe to down. Do it 3-4 times. It will cut down the excess length of your beard and give you a nicer appearance. Do the same task to the opposite side of your face. Try to keep the same beard density to each portion.
Give Beard a Shape
Generally, the beard around chin defines the shape of your beard. And beard shape depends on the shape of your face. For sorter and thin beard, V-shape is good. You can give a V or round shape to the medium size beard. And U shape always fits the long beard.
Here you need to start from the jawline to chin. Be very careful while trimming this section. And comb every time before drawing the clipper. Repeat this process until you get the desired shape.
Draw Neckline
Do you know a nicely drawn neckline defines the beauty of your beard? Yes, it is. The process is little tricky. But you can master it with few tries. You need to use a trimmer to do this. Start from the jawlines and stop at Adam’s apple. Make sure both ends get the same distance from the jawbone.
Now remove the beard below the neckline with the trimmer. Draw the trimmer from down to up. After cleaning this you should trim some beard near the neckline. Use beard clipper for this. Start from Adam’s apple to outward. Stop when you are satisfied.
Trim Mustache
After finishing the beard task, give focus on mustache. You can use a beard trimmer or scissor for this. I prefer scissors. Yes, it’s my choice. You can pick any one on which you feel comfortable.
There is no exact rule of trimming mustache. You can trim it as you want. I like to keep mine short. Just make sure it matches with your beard style. You can also do some experiments to identify which one suits you the most. If needed take suggestions from others.
Define Lines
You already created a neckline. It is not the end. You need to draw some other lines to give the finishing touch to your beard. It includes cheek line and the line between sideburn and earlobe.
Every man has natural cheek lines. But for a sharper and clear look, you should define it properly. Actually, it depends on you where and how you place the cheek lines. To do it use a trimmer to draw a line from sideburns to mouth corner. You can draw a straight or slightly curved line according to your preference.
Now draw lines between earlobes and sideburns. And connect it with the neckline that already defined. Your line creation is done. Remove excess short beard outside the lines with a trimmer, and be careful at this. Otherwise, accidentally you can damage your lines.
Finally, you are done.
Finishing Care
Use a beard brush remains to remove all the beard remains. If you want you can wash your beard again. After doing all these, moisturizes your beard with beard oil. It will nourish your beard and helps to recover the damages caused by the trimmer.
The Last Words
Hope you understand every step of beard trimming. Remember, nothing will teach you until you do it by yourself. After some trial and error, you will get the perfect result. If you need live demonstrations, see some YouTube videos. I embedded one here. Hope this will help you a lot.