Vaseline is a petroleum jelly based skin protectant which can work wonders for your dry lips and feet blisters, but what about using it on beard hairs?
There are many wild claims online about Vaselines potential in promoting beard growth, working as beard oil alternative, and being great for beard styling, but the validity of these claims are on shaky grounds.
In reality, Vaseline might not be as good for facial hair use as you might think, and even though it’s very cheap, there are still much better and almost as inexpensive beard products that are simply better for the job.
Let’s take a closer look.
Does Vaseline Help Beard Growth
There is a persistent myth which states that Vaseline could help beard growth, but it’s simply not true.
Vaseline is pure petroleum jelly and it has no effect – positive or negative – on your facial hair growth rate.
If you’re struggling to grow facial hair, do understand that there are far better and actually proven methods of growing a beard faster and even growing facial hair when you can’t normally.
These include:
- The use of beard rollers
- Using minoxidil to grow a beard
- Certain beard growth supplements
- Using peppermint essential oil to promote beard growth
But believing old wives tales and myths about things like applying Vaseline on your beard or something similar like rubbing onion juice to your facial hair, are not going to help you at all.
What Happens if You Put Vaseline on Your Beard
Vaseline is extremely inexpensive, so some guys have decided to use it as their go-to beard moisturizer. That’s no surprise, considering how expensive the best beard oils and best beard moisturizers can get.
But what happens if you apply Vaseline on your face and beard?
Well, as you know, Vaseline is thick and greasy. It will quickly make your beard look dirty and oily, so using it as a daily beard moisturizer is definitely a bad idea.
Even though Vaseline is thick and greasy, it won’t clog your pores or cause acne (another persistent myth circling the internet).
What Vaseline does on your beard and face is that it creates a protective barrier on top of your skin to trap moisture and prevent water from escaping.
This can be helpful if you need to protect your beard from harsh winter conditions for example, but at the end of the day, beard balm is actually far superior for this purpose (albeit it’s a bit more expensive).
Can I Use Vaseline to Style a Beard
You can use Vaseline to style your beard as it’s thick enough to give your beard some hold.
But since Vaseline also makes your beard look so greasy and unkempt, it’s absolutely useless as a beard styling aid.
I mean sure it gives you some hold, but why would you use it if it at the same time makes your beard look unkempt and dirty?
And while Vaseline is cheap, it doesn’t matter, as beard wax is also cheap, and does the styling job much much better.
Beard wax actually holds your beard better, does not make your facial hair look oily and greasy, and it contains natural carrier and essential oils to nourish and heal your beard.
Bottom line: If you’d have me pick which is better for styling a beard; the inexpensive Vaseline or the low-priced beard wax, I’d pick beard wax any day of the week.
Can Vaseline Help Damaged Beard Hairs
Vaseline is pure petroleum jelly, used primarily to heal dry lips and skin.
If your beard is extremely dry and brittle, you could apply a light coating of Vaseline on your beard area at night for a quick remedy to retain the moisture and let the skin barrier repair itself.
Considering how greasy-looking Vaseline will make your beard, you would then need to wash your beard every morning, which in turn makes using Vaseline as a beard remedy pretty time-consuming.
So if you’re not operating on an extremely tight budget, then using beard balm instead of Vaseline would be our recommendation.
Bottom line: Vaseline can help protect and heal damaged beard hairs, but at the cost of making your beard look greasy and oily.
Conclusion
Vaseline is a cheap petrloeum jelly skin protectant that could be used on facial hair.
However, it’s not the first recommendation for any main beard uses (moisturizer, healing balm, or styling) because beard oil, dedicated beard moisturizers, beard balm, and beard wax are all far superior for those tasks.
The biggest drawback of Vaseline is the fact that it makes your skin and beard look so oily and greasy, which means that you can really only use it at night.
