10 Beard Mistakes you Should Avoid

Have you got a great beard?  of course you do, beards are the best!  Now you probably want to keep it that way.  In this article we will talk about the top 10 Beard Mistakes you Should Avoid.  

1. Trimming without care

So you’ve had a lush beard for a while now, and you’re an aficionado at maintaining and grooming it. One morning you’re in a rush for work, see yourself in the mirror and realise you need a small touch up and trim. You say to yourself “it’s all good, I got this. Just a quick trim and I’ll be on my way.” Next thing you know you’ve carelessly taken out a chunk of beard, you've seen your barber do it and thought, I can do that. Now you’re panicking because you look like you passed out and somebody played a prank on you.

You can’t show up to work like this and have to either trim your whole beard back again or completely shave it off. Months of hard work undone just like that. Interestingly enough, statistics show that you’re more likely to crash around your own home or suburb because you’ve driven around those streets a million times and have become complacent. Same thing goes for your beard, you’ve trimmed it a million times and have become complacent and you now trim without care. Always go slow and concentrate on what you are doing. Less is more.  This will prove to be the difference.

2. Shaving too high of a neckline

I’m not sure why some men want to shave their beard up underneath their chin. Maybe they’ve mistakenly done it or they think it looks good. Either way, this is another no no. In a previous blog, I’ve shown where to shave around the neckline. This should be just above the Adam’s apple when your head is looking straight ahead. It will especially look bad if you have a heavy beard on your cheeks and you have shaven your neck. Your beard will look incomplete, less full, and frankly just weird. If you have made the mistake of shaving to high, or you cannot grow enough hair underneath you chin, you should trim your beard on your cheeks to a short length so that your neck line will be much less noticeable.

3. Cutting your moustache too short

If you cut your mo too short, there is a risk that you’ve automatically put an imaginary sign on yourself saying “beware of me,” amongst other labels like ‘the creepy uncle’. A short mo and a long beard is not a good look. However, there is a difference between a man who consciously trims his moustache too short and someone who might naturally have a shorter moustache compared to the rest of his beard. The latter will look natural and if kept proper will look fine. But someone who shaves his moustache and lets the beard flourish needs to let the mo grow back to its normal length so he can start making friends again.

4. Mutton chops

If you’re like Alex ‘Star-burns’ Osbourne and enjoy rocking some mutton chops, you need to really re-evaluate your appearance. You may think growing mutton chops is a cool alternative to a mainstream beard but to other people you will look like someone trapped in a time warp from another dimension. If you’re not a successful rock star that bases their appearance of ‘sticking it to the man,’ just plain and simple, don’t grow them.

5. Not keeping it clean

Your beard should be washed as much, if not, more than your head. Your beard is prone to getting dirty, catching food scraps and absorbing everyday stink. Then when you go to say hello to your partner, friends or your dear mum, you don’t want to offend them with that foul odour coming from your beard. Beard Responsibly! Please wash it. Not only will it smell fresh but it will also look much lushious and less frizzy. This is because the hair and skin underneath will be healthy. Healthy hair will have a nice natural glow, remain strong and grow out straighter.

6. Letting it grow wild and uneven

If you think you will achieve a long, lumberjack beard by letting it grow out by itself without having to touch it, you are sadly mistaken. Just like a precious flower garden, you have to nurture your beard and prune it from time to time. You need to trim back the stray whiskers that have a mind of their own & make sure the beard is conditioned well. Don’t worry, it won’t set your growth back at all. Instead, this will make the beard seem less shabby and make it appear more dense and it should grow more uniform. A common misconception is if you trim your beard, it will look thinner.  However, it’s quite the opposite.  Trimming those straggly ends will make it look thicker. Keep clipping it back once in a while, and like a gardener cutting a hedge, you’ll be ensuring that the hairs will grow out all together.

7. Having no patience

Patience is key when growing a beard. If you have no patience then you might be making a mistake in growing beard. You can always overcome this with strong will-power and dedication. The best way to go about this is to stop thinking that you are trying to grow a beard and just don’t shave. This change in mindset will stop the urge to shave off all your facial hair if you feel like you haven’t achieved a respectable beard.

8. Uncontrolled stubble

You might think that men who rock the stubble look appear to just grow out their 5 o'clock shadow and that's it. But stubble is actually very hard to maintain. You have to frequently trim it back to keep the length consistent while moisturising it every day to avoid rash and itch. Stubble will grow at various lengths and if you don’t keep trimming it back you will look like a pube face. When maintaining stubble as a look, it is also important to shave the edges and create a cheek and neck line so you don’t look like you just rolled out of bed, and people won’t noticed all that unbalanced hair.

9. Forgetting the thin spots when trimming

Beard hair may run lean in different areas for different people. For example, some men may have thin hair around the jaw while others may have a thin moustache. What is important is to be careful when trimming back these areas and not take off all this thin hair. For instance, you may be trimming back the thick hair on your chin and then move up around your jaw and cut it back to thin. Now you have patchy beard. If you can’t avoid doing this, you may have to change the clipper setting to a longer length when approaching thin hair.

10. Making sure the clipper setting is correct

You may be tired one morning and forget to check the setting on your clippers. If you live by yourself this shouldn’t be much of a problem because the setting will probably be the same as last time you used them (unless you’ve been shaving something else). However, if you are living with other people like a roommate or you’ve got kids running around the house, you might have to double check those clippers because the setting may have changed. If they have, you’ve got to ask yourself one question - do you really trust the people you are living with?

One day you might go straight for the clippers without checking and accidentally shave off your beard because it was left on number 1. Even worse, if the attachment isn’t locked on it could fall off midway through and give you a Skrillex on the side of your beard (and no one likes Skrillex). Always check!