Beard styles

Start with three questions, not fifty photographs

Fifty-two styles is a lot to scroll. Almost all of the choosing is done by three things, and none of them is which picture you liked.

What your face already grows. Density is inherited and it does not improve with waiting past your early thirties. If your cheeks come in thin, no amount of patience closes them, and every style built on full cheek coverage is off the table. That is not a limitation so much as a shortlist: it points you straight at the chin-led styles, which are a third of this directory.

How long your face is against how wide. A beard adds weight in one direction. You want that weight where the face is short of it. A round face wants length at the chin, a long face wants width at the cheeks, and a square jaw wants its corners softened rather than repeated. Oval faces want for nothing and can pick on preference.

How many minutes a morning you will genuinely give it. This is the one that decides whether you still have the beard in a year, and the one everybody answers optimistically. It is also less related to length than people assume, which is worth its own paragraph.

The upkeep rule nobody expects

The instinct is that short means easy. It does not.

What costs you time is the number of edges you have to keep, and how fast they go wrong. Stubble is the shortest thing you can grow and among the highest-maintenance styles here, because the whole look depends on one even length with clean lines, so you are re-cutting all of it twice a week forever.

A Bandholz is eight inches of beard with no shaping at all. Grow it, keep the neckline honest, comb it. There is no cheek line to redraw and no length to hit, so once it exists it asks less of your week than stubble does.

The trade is when you pay. A short, sharp beard costs you a little every few days. A long, natural-edged one costs you months up front and very little afterwards. Neither is easier, and the low maintenance list is built on that distinction rather than on length.

The five families

Every style in this directory is a variation on one of five ideas. Knowing which family you are in tells you more about the daily reality than the individual name does.

Full coverage. Cheeks, jaw and chin connected, from a corporate beard at ten millimetres to a Viking at eight inches. Needs even growth. Most forgiving of patchiness at length, least forgiving of it when short.

Chin-led. The cheeks shaved, the beard concentrated on the chin and moustache. A goatee, circle beard, van Dyke, balbo or anchor. Solves thin cheeks outright rather than hiding them, and adds length to the face.

Line work. A chin strap or a monkey tail: narrow bands that trace the jaw rather than fill it. Defines a jaw that is already there and cannot invent one.

Moustaches. Everything above the lip worn on its own, from a pencil to a handlebar. A complete answer when the cheeks and chin will not cooperate, not a consolation prize.

Barely there. Stubble, a soul patch, or nothing at all. Quick to reach, higher upkeep than they look.

What applies to every single style

Four things are true whatever you grow, and getting them right matters more than which of the fifty-two you picked.

Do not judge it before four weeks. Everything looks wrong at day ten, on everyone. The beard that eventually suits you is not visible yet, and the men with good beards are largely the ones who did not shave in week three.

The neckline sits on the neck, not the jaw. Two finger-widths above the Adam's apple, curved to follow the jaw round to just below each ear. A neckline cut along the jawbone makes the face look like it stops abruptly. This single line does more for how kept a beard looks than anything else on this page, and it needs doing every three or four days at any length.

Trim it dry. Wet hair hangs longer than its real length and springs back shorter, which is how men end up noticeably shorter than they intended. Wash it, dry it properly, comb it out, then cut.

Set one length before you touch the edges. Faces are not symmetrical and neither is beard growth. Cutting each side in turn to make them match cuts until there is nothing left to match.

How long any of it takes

Facial hair grows at roughly half an inch, or a bit over a centimetre, a month. That number does most of the planning for you and nothing shortens it.

The awkward stretch is weeks four to ten on anything longer than a short beard. It is the entire price of a big beard and it is paid once.

Where to go from here

If you know your face shape, start there: round, square, oval or long.

If you know how much beard you want, start with short, medium or long.

If something specific is deciding it for you, there are lists for patchy growth, going grey, a shaved head and minimum effort.

And if you already have a name in mind, the filters above will find it in a couple of clicks.

Questions we get asked

How many beard styles are there? There is no fixed number, because most styles are variations on a handful of shapes and the names overlap. This directory documents 52 with a diagram for each, which covers everything with a recognised name and a distinct outline.

What beard style suits me? Face shape narrows it, growth pattern narrows it further, and the time you will actually spend decides between what is left. In that order. The face-shape lists above are the quickest way in.

What is the most popular beard style? The goatee by search volume, by a wide margin, though most photographs labelled goatee are actually circle beards. For beards men actually keep, a short full beard with tidy edges is the commonest thing you will see.

How long does it take to grow a beard? Roughly half an inch a month. Four to six weeks for something with a shape, three to five months for a full beard, eight months and up for a long one.

Why is my beard patchy? Genetics, mostly, plus age. Density often improves into the late twenties and sometimes the early thirties, and after that it is what it is. Nothing over the counter adds follicles. The patchy beard styles page covers what to do about it.

What is the difference between a goatee and a van Dyke? A goatee is chin hair. A van Dyke separates a pointed chin beard from the moustache with a clear gap. A circle beard joins the two into a ring. All three leave the cheeks bare.

Do I need beard oil? Under about an inch, not really; a moisturiser on the skin underneath does more. Past two centimetres it stops being optional, and on a long beard it is the difference between hair that hangs and hair that frizzes.

How often should I trim? The shape every one to four weeks depending on the style, and the neckline every three or four days regardless of what you have grown.