Bearded bros the world over are renowned for talking about brushing their beards and their personal choices for beard brushes. But why? Isn’t it more manly and rugged to let your beard grow wild like nature intended?
Well, trust the experienced men who have paved the road before you. They’ve learned through tough experience that brushing makes for a much healthier beard and a much more enjoyable (and stylish) bearding life.
To put it simply, brushing can transform and revolutionize your beard and the skin beneath it by:
Let’s dive deeper into 9 benefits of brushing your beard…
Let’s start with the simplest, easiest benefit of brushing your beard - it removes unsightly dust, dirt, skin flakes and bits of stray food. You don’t always need to shower every time your beard looks unclean.
Tangles in your beard can be a pain, literally. making matters worse, tangles can turn into knots that are even more painful to unravel. And unfortunately, the longer a beard is, the greater the chances of tangles. Knots and tangles can result in hair breakage and bare patches. Ouch!
Simply brushing your beard a couple times a day can prevent these problems and keep your whiskers smooth and manageable.
Then there are hairs that want to grow in weird directions, especially those annoying flyaways that can spoil the look you really want. Regular brushing will train those rebellious hairs to conform and start pointing in the direction you want. The training is doubly effective if you apply a couple drops of beard oil and some beard balm each day.
A brushed beard is easier to shape and style. Add beard oil to the brushing process – and some beard balm after – and you’ll find the hairs behave themselves way better than if they were left au naturel. You’ll be looking sleek, slick and intentionally sexy, instead of wild, woolly and unintentionally sloppy.
The same applies to your handlebar mustache. The hairs respond much better to mustache wax if they’ve been brushed smooth first.
Beard oil doesn’t distribute itself. Spreading it around with just your fingers causes greasy, patchy clumps. Brushing your beard distributes that oil to evenly coat all whiskers and the skin beneath them.
Evenly distributed beard oil brings moisture to hair and skin, conditions them and nourishes them. That way you can avoid brittleness and breakage of the whiskers and dry flaking of the skin.
Plus brushing the oil through provides a glorious gloss to your face’s prized asset.
When beard hairs get too dry, they’re more prone to weaken, split and break. This problem gets worse if hairs become frizzy and tangled, because the pulling of irregular brushing will snap them.
When too many hairs clump and break, your beard will look patchy and uneven. The simple act of brushing separates tangled and clumped whiskers. This not only makes a fuller-looking beard, it makes hairs more resilient while removing the weaker ones to enable stronger new ones to take their place.
Smoother, straighter whiskers brush easier and break less.
Wherever hair grows on your face and neck, your skin produces a natural oil called sebum. Its purpose is to coat hair strands to keep them nourished, moisturized, soft and supple.
Not enough sebum oil will cause those strands to become brittle and break, which can result in a patchy look. Enter the beard brush to spread that natural sebum evenly. Brushing also stimulates your skin to produce sebum.
If you produce too much sebum, your whiskers will look and feel lank and greasy. This can be solved with regular cleaning with a nourishing beard wash and regular brushing with beard oil.
Think exfoliating your skin isn’t a “manly” thing to do? Think again! Caring for your skin makes your beard look more ruggedly awesome.
A good beard brush gently but firmly sweeps dead skin cells off of your face, clearing the pores and preventing beard acne and blizzards of ugly beard dandruff (beardruff).
Without brushing, your beard traps all these things, which makes for a buildup of filth and gunk that causes irritation, infection, itch, rash, clumping, breakage and an all-round miserable bearding experience.
Some guys give up on their beards in the early growth phase, typically around one month, because it itches incessantly. Like we just said about exfoliating, brushing that new beard is sheer relief. Even with a new short beard.
Brushing removes the dirt and particles, stimulates the skin’s soothing sebum, and trains the hairs early to grow the right way. This last point is especially important with beard itch because newly-sprouted hairs have prickly ends and they scrape on skin to make it itch. Brushing soothes that problem by discouraging hair ends from curling back towards the face until the tips naturally become tapered and soft.
We say “may” because there’s no scientific evidence to prove that brushing a beard encourages better growth - and we like to be upfront and honest. BUT, there is a ton of evidence that brushing stimulates the blood flow under the skin, which brings oxygen and nourishment to follicles and hair shafts. And that’s a very good thing!
Yes. Yes! YES! A beard brush is all about the bristles.
Synthetic bristles are abrasive, so they tug and scrape. They can even damage hairs and generate static electricity, causing frizz. The bristles are also usually the same stiffness throughout their lengths. In short, they simply don’t cut the mustard.
Get a wild boar’s hair beard brush! You’ll never regret it. Boar’s hairs have an amazing logic-defying combo of flexibility and firmness. While the lower parts of the hairs are quite stiff to carry the heavy work of brushing and cleaning, they taper and soften towards the tips so that they’re gentle on skin and glide more easily through nests of hair. That way you don’t have to force the brush and scrape away at your face forest.
What about a comb? Uh, no. The stiff teeth of a comb get caught in tangles and pull painfully. They do nothing to condition your hair or your skin. In fact, they can cause more harm than good. Here is more info on Why a Wild Boar Bristle Beard Brush is the Badass Best
So, bro… it’s time to get brushing! If you want the best beard you can grow, follow the advice of a pro! A great beard doesn’t happen by itself. A regular routine of care and grooming will bring out the best in your mane. And proper beard brushing is at the very center of that routine.
Stay rugged, my bearded friend.
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