Trim your beard

A SCIENCE IN ITSELF?

Trimming your beard? Easier said than done. Many men struggle to find the right length and shape when standing in front of the mirror. Master barber Behar from Eric:Barbier reveals how to keep your look fresh at home, why you shouldn’t try to fix a bad trim yourself, and what makes a good beard trimmer.

The biggest problem is often that many men don’t even know which beard suits their face shape. When shaping with a beard trimmer, they end up making their face look too long or unnecessarily round. That’s why I would always recommend getting a style consultation from a barber first. As professionals, we have an eye for the right styles and can execute them neatly. What’s more, this helps define the contours that are crucial for a well-groomed appearance.

How to keep your beard in shape

Once this ‘template’ has been created by a professional, you can ensure at home that the beard stays in shape. I always advise my clients to touch up the contours every two to three days, depending on the thickness of their beard growth. This keeps the line clearly visible and makes it easy to maintain the contrast. This can be done with a straight razor, a safety razor or a contouring attachment, which is built into many beard trimmers. Whether and when men need to trim their beards depends on the desired look: I would trim a three-day stubble to the right length every two to three days.

Please be more careful with full beards: start here with the trimmer’s highest setting, so you can gradually work your way down to the right length. Things can be a bit more radical under the moustache: a line about one millimetre wide at the upper lip helps prevent stray hairs in the mouth area. However, it’s not at all easy to replicate the subtle transitions exactly as a barber would. For round face shapes, for example, we trim the beard shorter at the sides than at the chin to make it appear longer. To ensure these gradations and the contours – which generally slope downwards – are neatly maintained, you should pop into the barber’s every three weeks.

Preparation and care – how to trim your beard properly

But how do you trim your beard properly? Here too, as with wet shaving, preparation plays an important role. It is best to wash your beard before the procedure and let it dry, so that it is free of styling products. However, many people then make a crucial mistake by blow-drying or straightening the hair before trimming. This distorts its natural fall – with serious consequences for the result.

Whirls or fine curls may disappear for the moment, but they reappear after the next wash – and detract from the trimming result, as everything now looks crooked and uneven. With my clients, I make sure to trim the beard in as natural a state as possible. This also saves time in the bathroom in the morning, as the beard is always in shape. After shaving, blow-dry out all the cut hairs or wash them with beard shampoo. Afterwards, a nourishing beard oil ensures that the hair and skin are moisturised.

What to do in an emergency?

It is rare, but we do occasionally have emergencies in our salons: as trimming isn’t that easy, especially with longer hair, some men accidentally cut deep edges into their beards. Depending on the severity, you shouldn’t try to fix this yourself in your bathroom at home, but go straight to an expert. In such cases, we can often save the beard and trim it so that it suits the shape of the face and still looks good during the subsequent growth phase.

How to find the right beard trimmer

Anyone deciding to buy a beard trimmer is spoilt for choice: countless manufacturers now offer these grooming tools in many different variants. Models with fine-toothed comb attachments are very efficient. Thanks to the smaller gaps between the teeth, the hairs do not bend away but are cut cleanly. It’s like using a fine-toothed comb, which catches far more hairs at once than wider versions. To achieve different looks, trimmers with various attachments or a continuously adjustable device are also ideal.

Trim your beard Do you have any questions about beard trimming? I’d be happy to show you what to look out for during your next visit to one of our three salons in Hamburg. In the meantime, here’s an overview of the most common shaving mistakes.