How to Maintain Your Beard

Follow our grooming guide to learn how to look after & maintain your beard to keep it looking sharp.

Beard grooming: How to maintain your beard

Once you’ve mastered the art of growing a beard like a boss, you’ll be ready to groom it to perfection. Now it’s the time to trim, shape and maintain your beard. Follow our easy to read guide below, filled with the best tips and advice to keep your beard looking sharp.

5 tips on how to trim your beard

Can’t get to the barbers? Don’t start to panic and think that you’ll look like someone off The Walking Dead just yet. These easy to follow tips will get you thinking - why did I ever go to the barbers in the first place? Get your beard trimmers at the ready for that even look.

Firstly, give your beard a good comb through to help soften the hairs (find out the best way to comb your beard further down the page).
Then, use beard trimmers to carefully trim your beard, but make sure to start with a bigger guard - so you don’t accidentally trim it too short.
When trimming, your aim is to keep the hairs a little longer around the chin, and shorter around the side of your face. Using a number 3 setting around the sides, and a 4 or 5 around the chin will do the job nicely.
When trimming your moustache, keep it around the same length as your cheeks.
Clean up the edges by using scissors - make sure you get rid of any loose long hairs.

You’ll then need to shave your neckbeard, which we’ll go into more detail on how to do that and taper your beard in the next section. It’s a little more tricky - so pay attention to master that fine piece of art.

How to Maintain Your Beard

Shaving your neck beard

Shaving your beard neckline is an important step into shaping your overall look. It doesn’t matter how short and stubbly, or big and bushy your beard is – you should always try to get into the routine of shaving your neckbeard. This is possibly the hardest step of them all - so read carefully unless you want a botched up beard.

Typically, the rule of thumb is to place two fingers on your Adam’s apple and to shave everything below where your top finger is.
You then curve the trim upward - in a U-shape towards your ears. There are 2 ways you can then stop the shave - either by a “hard stop” on the beard line or from tapering (when the beard slowly fades away towards your neck).
For tapering, you’ll need to have smaller guards. So, you’ll need to shorten the guard down to half of the usual length, for example, a 4 down towards a 2. Then you’ll need to trim up until your beard.

Finish off with using one of our post-shave balms or lotions, such as our NIVEA MEN Protect and Care 2 Phase Post-Shave Lotion. Applying this after every shave will help keep those annoying spots and blemishes at bay.

How to Maintain Your Beard

Cleaning Your Beard

Why should I wash my beard you say? Well – firstly it’s hygienic, we don’t want you walking around with a greasy beard – let alone have any food pitching a tent up in there. Secondly, using products can help strengthen the hair on your beard, help avoid spots and irritation, and lastly, keep your beard looking fresh.

Keeping your beard soft and smooth is the ultimate key to not having the impulse to shave it all off when it gets too dry and scratchy. So keeping it clean is an important factor in maintaining your beard.

To wash your beard, we’d suggest using a shampoo like NIVEA MEN Active Clean Shampoo 2-3 times a week. It’ll help your beard hair get squeaky clean, without drying it out. But remember to wash your face afterwards with cold water and pat dry - no-one wants a frizzy beard. Then you just need to comb it into shape.

How to Maintain Your Beard

Skincare for Men with Beards

Although having a beard does take up a good chunk of your face, it absolutely shouldn’t mean that you should forget about your skincare routine. We know beards can be beautiful to look at, but if you don’t maintain your beard well - then that impressive look can be tarnished by breakouts and itchiness. So keeping your skin healthy and nourished, is also a top priority in terms of beard grooming.

We’d recommend using a face scrub that’s designed for bearded men. Such as NIVEA MEN Protect and Care Face Scrub - which has the all-important ingredients of Aloe Vera & Pro-Vitamin B5 which help to remove unwanted oils and dirt from your skin and beard hair.

How to Maintain Your Beard

How to Comb Your Beard Properly

You might think that combing your beard is pretty simple… But, to truly win at bearding, there are a few unique ways of sliding that comb through your beard.

The comb: you should have a comb that has both wide and narrow ‘teeth’. The wide for your beard, and the narrow for your moustache.
Firstly, hold your comb in a relaxed grip, and hold in an upward position. Start combing your beard away from your face in an uphill motion, to ‘fluff’ it away from your face. This will help your beard look full whilst maintaining a soft finish.
You’ll probably come across snags in your beard (a result of strands of hair crossing over each other) - which is nothing to worry about. Instead of aggressively trying to force it out, be a little patient for once, remember, grooming your beard to flawlessness is a marathon and not a sprint. Gently pull the snag out with your comb instead.
Finally, comb your beard back down in the style you desire. Combing in a normal downward motion as if you’re combing your hair.

Feel free to use some product to further add those finishing touches to your beard and enhance your grooming experience.