3 Mistakes That Harm Your Beard

This is a good problem to have! But not all problems with beards are so harmless. By now, you know all about the value of proper beard care, but if you want to make your whiskers a long-term part of your life (and you should), you’ll want to be aware of some risky behaviors that might harm your beard over time.

Over-washing

One of the most unusual, surprising aspects about growing hair is that the longer it gets, the less you need to wash it. Redefining what you think of as “care” is the secret.

Care means knowing when not to fuss about something. Ask any man or woman with glorious tresses, and they’ll tell you that smart hair care is the secret to their luxuriant locks, i.e., laying off the shampoo. Now, in beard (and hair) grooming, washing away grime and helping to make your whiskers fragrant and attractive, shampoo is used as an essential tool.

But shampoo may contribute to bad hair by using it too much. Like the rest of your hair, your beard is naturally protected by your body’s oils from the elements. The oil builds up easily when you wear your hair short and needs regular washing. But it takes longer for those nourishing oils to make their way along the length of your hair until you allow your hair to grow out a bit. Washing strips the oils too much before they have a chance to do their job properly, resulting in split ends, frayed hair, brittle whiskers, and worse.

Improper Grooming

Of course, you don’t want to walk around all the time with a dirty beard, and the people around you don’t either. You have to follow some form of grooming routine; you just have to show some discipline.

Even taking a conservative beard care approach can cause problems. Very little brushing will leave your beard tangled and dirty. Your beard would be made more fragile by too much shampoo. Your hair can get damaged by too much combing. And needless to say, it’s just asking for a disaster to use cleansers containing harsh chemicals.

The trick is to get a sense of how frequently you need to wash your whiskers and create a routine around that. This is going to be a trial-and-error process because everyone’s needs vary according to their hair length and individual biology. But we can certainly give you a universal beard care base.

Begin here and tweak as required:

• Every two or three days, wash your beard.
• Take care to keep your beard from being scrubbed on “off” days if you shower every day.
• To avoid dirt and grime from building up and to help work your natural oils along the length of your whiskers, use our brush several times a day.
• If you’ve washed your whiskers or not, add beard oil once a day.

Beard of the Philosopher

Remember what we said about how irresistible your beard is? How much you enjoy stroking it, and how are others always tempted to touch it, too? Well, we’ve got some bad news: this is something else that can turn into a problem for your beard. Every once in a while, a little hands-on love of your chin hair is fine. But do it too often, and it becomes yet another source of trauma for your whiskers.

The hair is rough and creates pressure on the underlying skin by scratching, picking, and tugging at your beard. Worse than that, the repeated hands-on habits tend to focus on certain patches of your beard. All that stress and friction will leave you with a weakened or even bare patch of beard before long. And that, no one needs.

The daily use of beard wax is one way to help combat this wear. This will create a protective coating by gently working a little bit of wax into your beard, which not only enhances your beard but also keeps it looking smooth and feeling soft. Having such luxurious whiskers, of course, just means they’re going to be more tempting to run your hands through, but the ol’ self-control has to kick in at some point.

All of these risks eventually come down to overdoing it. Not only does taking care of your beard mean learning how to groom it, but also when to leave it alone. But we’re sure that you will be perfectly prepared to stop excessive beard wear with our treatment tips, a good dose of Beard Care Pro grooming products, and an attentive eye. If you keep an eye on the signs before they snowball and make minor changes to your routine as needed, you’re going to nip these beard-destroyers in the bud… and that means you’re never going to have to cut your beard.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also read this: New Year, New Beard: 5 Beard Styles to Upgrade Your Facial Hair