Your beard can be your greatest ally or your worst friend. Growing a thick dense beard is a feat of its own, but taming and training that growth to stay in place while managing the cowlicks can be even harder.
Since the facial hair is androgenic-hair, it usually grows in curly thanks to the tightly-bound keratin that coils it up and makes it go everywhere.
So in an effort to make your beard softer, straighter, and more manageable many men turn to beard damaging quick fixes like chemical beard relaxing creams.
Are there better – safer ways to tame your facial hair, so that it looks less like a beard made from pubes, and more like a real beard?
You bet there are, and here are the best beard taming methods you should be doing. ↓
Try the Beard Straightening Heat Brush
Just a few years ago, taming a bushy beard used to be a huge time-consuming chore.
It involved things like taking a shower, applying beard oil, then immediately blow-drying the beard while you would use a beard comb to manually straighten out the beard hairs.
Granted, some men still do this, but it’s insanely slow and not really that effective if your beard is thick, bushy, and wiry.
Luckily, there’s a better solution that has gained massive popularity during the last year or so, and something that I think could completely replace the old blow-dryer beard taming method.
And that is the beard straightener.
This is not a completely new idea at all since women have tamed their hairs with similar types of brushes for years now, but it was only recently that special beard straightening heat brushes have started popping up at all large online retailers.
How straighten a beard with a heated brush:
- Power up the brush.
- Wait for about a minute for it to heat up.
- Then choose the heat setting you want to use.
- Now just brush downwards and let the heat do the work.
This process in total takes about 5 minutes once you get used to it, and since the electric beard brushes don’t use crazy high temperatures, they aren’t that damaging to your facial hair either.
Hold the Beard in Place with Beard Wax
There are at least more than twenty different types of beard products out there (we know because we ranked the best beard product from each category).
Out of all the beard care products, the one that is going to help you the most with taming and training the beard would be the beard wax.
It’s similar to beard balm, but the difference is that the formulation has a higher amount of natural waxes in it such as beeswax and lanolin.
The higher wax content will naturally give the product a much stronger hold, and that’s exactly what we are looking for as that helps us keep the beard hairs from sticking out.
How to use beard wax to tame the beard:
- Press against the wax with your nail to scoop some out.
- If the wax is super hard, you may need to blow-dry the tin.
- Warm up the wax in your fingers so that it melts a bit.
- Spread the beard wax all-around your beard, but not on skin.
- Wait for the wax to start to harden and start styling your beard.
NOTE: You should still use the wax even if you have already tamed your beard with a heated brush. The wax will help keep your beard in place for longer.
Train the Beard and Mustache with a Beard Brush
Brushing the beard is a fantastic way to distribute beard oils and natural sebum oils evenly across your beard hair strands.
On top of it, daily brushing helps remove dirt and dead skin cells from the skin underneath the beard, and it stimulates the release of natural sebum oils which help moisturize the beard.
When it comes to taming the beard, a stiff boar bristle beard brush comes in handy, as you can use it to train the beard to naturally lay and adjust to the direction you brush it.
Granted, this is far from being as effective as using a heated beard straightening brush, but the difference is that you can gently brush the beard with a boar bristle brush a couple of times per day.
Regular brushing keeps training your whiskers and eventually helps greatly in your beard taming efforts, as your facial hair will be more manageable
Use a Beard Comb on the Go
You should always carry a small beard comb with you if you have a wild beard that is hard to keep in place.
Certainly, a beard comb doesn’t compare to the styling ability of a beard brush, and even less so to the powers of a heated brush…
But the key thing here is that you can fit a small beard and mustache comb into your pocket, and whip it out whenever you need it on the go.
“Combing the beard helps untangle knots and provides a mild facial hair training effect on the side.”
Don’t expect it to work wonders, but it might still prove beneficial if your beard starts to have a mind of its own just before a board room meeting or an important date.
Conclusion
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tame the facial hair, but it does take a steady hand, heated beard brush, some beard wax, a beard comb, and a boars bristle beard brush.
Utilizing these four tools can transform your unruly and bushy beard into a perfectly aligned straight facial hair that demands respect and gets all the right attention from the opposite sex.
Did we miss any beard taming tips and tricks? If so, let us know in the comments below.