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Many contemporary beard styles take a bit of care and grooming to pull off. The results, however, can make your appearance distinctive and compelling, while also allowing you to mesh your personal style and social circles into your everyday appearance.
Everyone will have different best beard styles. Whether or not a beard style looks and feels right on you personally will often be determined by the shape of your face and how you wear it.
Here’s a list of some styles that we think everyone should try at least once, even if that means passing through the style to see how it looks, when you’re on your way to a clean shave.
A Full Beard
The full beard is the most iconic of men’s beard styles, not only as a manly status symbol, but also because most men who have given it a try know it takes some serious commitment and good beard growth. Additionally, even though you’re not shaving frequently, full beards require maintenance to remain groomed. This may include brushing. combing, using balm or oil , and edge maintenance to keep everything looking intentional.
Growing a longer beard for the first time requires patience. If you usually keep a short beard style you might find that you need to resist the urge to trim for about four weeks. This is because the hair needs time to grow in evenly before you start shaping it. The enjoyable part of a full beard though, is learning how you like to shape and mold it. And since you’ve grown the most hair that your face can offer, you have a lot to work with. This means that you have more control over how to highlight your features and train your hair.
The Scholars and Corporate Beards
A meticulous or well-groomed full beard is considered a scholars beard. It’s also a handsome beard style for older men. This similar style is called the corporate beard when maintained full but no longer than an inch.
A Scruffy Beard
Scruffy beards give the impression of the wearer being carefree and not overly concerned with their appearance. Of course, there’s an art to the scruffy beard as well, making it is more work than it looks, but when done right, the effortless appearance can give a rugged charm that fits in while hiking in the woods or getting serious in the workplace.
A Stiletto Beard
The stiletto is traditionally a full beard, sometimes connected with sideburns, that is trimmed and styled so that the longest part of the beard is at the chin, forming a slight point. The stiletto beard adds a lot of weight to the chin, in a good way. This tends to be a good style for bald men, since it offsets a bare top.
A Short Boxed
The boxed style works with a long or oval facial type, as it grows as long, or longer on the sides than it does on the chin, keeping the beard from lengthening the face too much. This is a forgiving style for those who want a stepping stone for their styling and grooming skills, since it can be achieved using an even all around trim.
Also known as the stubble-like beard, the short boxed is a neatly trimmed beard with careful lines and fading. This look is perfect for effortless movement from business to play. Not only is this one of the easiest short beard styles for men, but its stubble-like appearance makes this sexy beard style easy to pull off. Variations include thinning the hair on the cheeks or working it into a beardstache.
Small Beard Styles
Goatee
Goatees have cycled in and out of style throughout the past few decades, reaching its peak in the ‘90s. Whatever your personal take on the style, it can be a great boon for someone whose hair grows in more patchy. It’s also a good beard for those who are undecided on what they want to do with their beard, since many contemporary styles have developed from it.
A similar development from the goatee is the extended goatee or Hollywoodian Beard, which gives a strong emphasis to the jawline, by shaving downward toward the jawline at a bias. Another style similar to this is a wider chin strap combined with a mustache. The style does away with sideburns and the beard can be trimmed on the chin as low or high as the wearer prefers.
Balbo Beard
The original Balbo is a beard in three parts. It combines a chin strap and a mustache that are detached from the sideburns, with a soul patch in the center. This traditional form takes a lot of maintenance and trimming and can be difficult for anyone, but a beard perfectionist, to get right. However, merged with a classic goatee, the style has actually spawned a number of popular offshoots that give the style variety. It’s a great asset to accentuate the cheekbones and jawline, and can offer some contouring benefits.
The anchor is a variation of the Balbo beard. Its ability to make any man look like a strong naval captain seems to have upped its prominence with many who have dropped their goatee for a while. A full anchor is usually connected by sideburns. The current trend, however, is to leave it detaching, making the point of the chin and its balance with the mustache above, more of a focal point.
A Van Dyke Beard
The van dyke beard is a medieval style, derived from that worn by Flemish master Anthony van Dyck. The style has persisted through the centuries; however it remains the chosen styles of those who give off an artistic flair. The style is made from combining a mustache and goatee, and keeping the style light and pointy. This style does not require lines to connect the beard and mustache, making it the ideal for someone who has trouble growing a full beard or feels that their beard is too patchy for another style.
A Chin Strap
The chin strap gets flack due to its need of constant maintenance, while also being difficult to implement and pull off. As a cultural icon it can indicate someone who enjoys spending their free-time at the gym, and at its best it can emphasize a nearly perfect chin and jawline. Nonetheless, the chin strap has a strong representation as a beard style worn by black men.
It’s best when the hair is able to grow thick and the follicles are not spaces far apart, since the majority of the facial hair is shaved off in a clean line to achieve this distinctive style. This can be an unforgiving beard style and therefore requires a defined jawline. Not only is it daring, but the style requires continual maintenance to keep the edges clean and symmetrical, and the rest of the face shaved.
Different beard styles suite different facial shapes, maintenance routines, and a personal interest in pulling off that style. In fact, mixing and matching with hair and facial hair style can make a lot of the difference when it comes to pulling off a style that you like that seems to be outside of your reach at the time.
