So you grew a beard but quickly found out that it grows all over the place with uneven scraggly hairs and it just simply looks like an unkempt mess.
That happens.
Scraggly beard is a type of facial hair that has hairs growing unevenly (think beard cowlicks) and in different lengths around the lower part of your face.
It gives men a scruffy and rough look that can sometimes enhance the appearance and make a man look more masculine, but more often times than not it just makes guys look messy and unclean.
Luckily we have some tips and tricks to turn your un-groomed facial hair back into neat and immaculate condition. So that instead of your beard hairs flying all over the place, they can finally rest against your cheeks in a neat and orderly fashion.
Instead of hiding your frazzled scruff beard, you can finally be proud of it and carry it with confidence and dignity.
Contents show
How to Fix a Scraggly Beard
1. Get Yourself a Beard Straightener
If your beard is curly then it’s much more likely to end up becoming scraggly as well as you grow it out.
And even if your beard wasn’t curly, it can still have a lot of fly-away rogue beard hairs that just refuse to lay down flat against your cheeks.
How to fix this scraggly beard menace?
Very easily, you just need to learn how to straighten your beard and then it’s just about getting the best beard straightener or even using the trusty old blow-dryer from there on out.
You might think that something like straightening a scraggly beard would be extremely time-consuming and just not worth it, but that’s just not the case.
In 2020 the heated beard tools (especially heated beard straightening brushes) have evolved so far that it literally takes about 5 minutes to safely straighten even the most scruffiest messy beard.
2. Trim Your Scraggly Beard to an Even Length
Here’s a secret.
If you just let your beard grow out naturally and think it will evenly fill out and be about the same length from side to side, you’re wrong. It will not grow nice and neat, it will grow out scraggly and scruffy (not the good kind of scruffy).
Seriously. I see so many guys doing this, growing their beards out and then expecting it just naturally start to look like the beard of Dan Bilzerian or Jake Gyllenhaal’s.
Just stop those dreams man. In reality almost all beards look like a bunch of pubes if you don’t do anything to them at all whilst they grow.
So, this brings us to the point. What should you do? Well, you should be trimming your beard, not into any specific beard style particularly, but just enough to even out the rogue hairs and get the majority of your facial hair into a somewhat even length.
Quick tip on trimming: Say you have a 3 month beard for example, which should be about 1.5″ in length, how would you even this out with a beard trimmer? Well, grab yourself a guard comb that’s anywhere from 1.3″ to 1.5″ and go through the whole beard to cut away the scraggliest of hairs.
3. Beard Combs Are Your Friend
It would almost be criminal NOT to mention a beard comb in a post that discusses the methods of untangling a beard and making it look more well-kempt.
While using a beard comb is not the most effective way of preventing a scraggly beard, it certainly doesn’t hurt to regularly comb through your facial hair to align the isolated hairs into order.
Regular combing also helps keep your beard snag-free and helps distribute the natural oils (and beard oils) evenly across the facial hair fibers.
All of these things are going to help in making your beard less scruffy, less messy, and you know the drill.
I have always recommended Kent Beard Combs to our readers but if you want to try something different, we do have a bigger list of the best beard combs here.
4. Brush it Up with Boar Bristles
It’s my humble opinion that every guy that owns a beard longer than 1″ should own at least one beard brush. It’s easily one of the most useful and versatile beard tools to own, helps you keep your unkempt beard in shape, and they are cheap as butter.
Beard brushes come with at least the following benefits:
- Exfoliates the skin underneath the beard.
- Boosts beard circulation to help you grow your beard faster.
- Moisturizes the beard by stimulating the natural sebum oil production.
- Helps keep isolated beard hairs in neat and tame order.
- Removes dirt and debris from within the beard hairs.
Since you probably have a bushy scraggly facial hair that refuses to be tamed, I recommend a stiff brush to get that under control. You should take a look at our full list of the best beard brushes here.
5. Define Your Beards Neckline
To make your beard look less scraggly, less scruffy, and just neater in general, you need to define your beards neckline.
This sounds harder than it is, and once you’ve carved out your beards neckline a couple of times it starts to become easier. Like riding a bike.
You can do this easily at home by placing your index and middle finger on top of the highest point of your Adam’s apple, and defining the lowest part of the neckline right about there.
In other words, the optimal place for your beards neckline will be about 2 finger-widths upward from the top of your Adam’s apple, or about 1.5″.
Quick tip: As you’re trimming the scraggler beard hairs around the lower part of your jawline, make sure to not go as high as the jawline (otherwise your beards neckline will rise up to your cheeks when you laugh or open your mouth). It’s best to define the beards jawline at 1-2″ below your actual jawline.
6. Use Beard Wax Instead of Oils and Balms
There’s no doubt about the fact that beard oil is the number one beard product out there. It’s the most useful overall, and the most sold by far.
But when it comes to fixing a scraggly beard, beard wax is actually much much better.
Why? Well that’s kind of obvious really. Beard wax gives your beard hold. It’s almost like hair wax, but for beard use.
Beard oil on the other hand provides virtually zero % hold to your beard, it’s just a good moisturizer but that’s about it.
You can easily compare this situation to scraggly and messy hair. Would you try to style and tame your messed up hair with some oil, or would you rather use a holding wax?
(Please say you didn’t answer oil).
The key ingredient in beard wax is beeswax, and that’s what gives it all of it’s hold and taming qualities, which is just about perfect for managing scraggly beard hairs.
Pro tip: If you want some good recommendations beard wax recommendations, take a look at our guide to best beard waxes here.
7. Tidy Up Your Scraggly Mustache
A central piece to almost any beard styles is the mustache, and believe me when I say that it can definitely make or break a beard (except the wolverine beard, that’s in a class of its own).
The most scraggliest part of the beard is typically the upper lip, and this is because the hair there tends to grow a bit faster than the rest of the beard, and the surface it grows on is quite uneven.
So, naturally if our goal is to make your beard less scraggly and more neater, we should be focusing on taming the mustache.
Grab your best beard scissors and get to work. Snag all the rogue hairs that appear to have live’s of their own, and make sure that the mustache hairs are short enough (or styled to the sides) so that they won’t droop down to your mouth.
8. Test Different Beard Styles
Most guys, especially newbie beard growers, think that they should either be able to grow the sickest full beard in the universe, or have no beard at all.
Well I have news for you my scraggly bearded friend.
There are many short beard styles and even stubble styles that are much less likely to become a scraggly looking mess, and some of them might make your face look even better than a full beard ever could.
How do I know? I don’t, but neither do you until you try and test different beard styles.
Bottom line: If you can’t grow a full beard without it becoming a scruffy scraggly unkempt bush, then quit hitting your head against the wall and try something different for a change. Maybe a heavy stubble suits you better or a short boxed beard.
9. Schedule a Visit to a Good Beard Barber
I’ve always cheered for at home beard grooming and a lot of this websites guides are in a way or another related to that.
However, sometimes you just have to take a trip to a good barber that knows how to turn your unkempt frazzled beard into a neat and orderly work of art, and in most cases the results far outweigh those that can be achieved at home.
So if you have an uneven scruffy beard that you just kind of can’t get to look good no matter what tricks you try to pull, then as a last resort you should definitely go to a barber and have an expert take a look, trim it, and give you his best recommendations.
At the very least your beard will likely look amazing for a while, and not only that, but you are likely to get a lot of new ideas and good practical beard trimming tips that you can then use when trimming and styling the beard at home.
Conclusion
Your beard is unkempt? So what. It’s 2020 and there are so many different methods of un-scraggling a messy beard.
You could straighten it, blow-dry it, trim it to even length, tame it with heavy-duty beard wax, and play around with different beard styles until you find one that looks orderly and neat on you.
If all else fails, take your scruff to the local barber shop and have an expert take a look.
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