While over 50% of UK men are now wearing beards [1], not all of them are fortunate enough to be able to achieve luxurious facial hair. If you are one of the lucky ones who can grow a full, healthy beard, it’s natural to want to flaunt it.
A lush, long beard can be incredibly masculine and appealing. But at the same time, it can take a lot of work and commitment to keep it looking great. However, you’ll be happy to learn that there are certain facial hairdos which require less special attention than others, especially if you have good beard grooming practices.
And if you’ve always dreamt of wearing a look that requires full facial hair but couldn’t fix your patchy beard, worry not. You don’t have to settle for a bad beard. There are a variety of treatments out there that can help you out. You may even be eligible for a beard transplant, which can permanently give you the lush facial hair you desire.
This article will tell you everything you need to know about full beard styles, such as:
Many men think that a full beard is a long one. However, that is not always true. Facial hair fullness is more about its density and the proportion of your face that it covers rather than its length. However, growing your beard out for longer can indeed make it appear more dense and less patchy. You can recognise a full beard by the following characteristics:
All full beard styles are relatively easy to style, as they don’t require you to trim your beard very frequently or in intricate shapes. They also don’t require using many styling products to make them look impressive and manly. Here are some of the best-looking and lowest maintenance styles, which can keep you looking sharp even on a busy schedule:
The natural (or classic) full beard is just as its name describes it – facial hair that grows almost unhindered until it unites your sideburns, cheeks and chin, covering every part of your face below your nose. This style does not need to be very long, a few centimetres will suffice. And all the trimming it needs is to remove flyaways and keep it from becoming too wild and frizzy.
As the signature Jason Momoa beard, the popularity of this elegant and virile style has soared in the past few years. And rightfully so. While it starts out like a classic full beard, it involves growing your chin hair longer and trimming the cheek hair shorter, emphasising your central beard area. Then, if your facial hair does not taper on its own towards the ends, you can style it manually, using a bit of oil to give it a slightly pointy shape.
A Garibaldi beard is a bold and confident style which can take at least half a year to grow before it can be trimmed into its iconic shape. However, once you get there, all you need to do is give it a regular trim to be sure it doesn’t lose contour.
This style is ideally 15-20 cm long and has a wide, flat, rounded base. It is ideal for oval or rectangular faces and can be left slightly on the wilder side. Using wax, mousse or other fixating products on it can ruin its unruly appearance, taming it and undermining its effect.
Unlike the Garibaldi, the Bandholz beard is left to grow longer than 20 cm if possible. It involves a longer, more stylish moustache (often with its tips turned up) and is not rounded at the base.
The Bandholz can take months or even years to grow, and it is often allowed to flow naturally with minimal trimming. It is especially suited for more mature men with rounder faces, and it looks amazing on silver foxes. It is properly cleaned, brushed, and moisturised as long as it can provide a regal appearance and give you a confident, dignified vibe.
This style is very versatile, you can wear it as well with a shorter style as you can with a waist-long one. Its defining characteristic is that it only has to be lengthy enough to allow you to split it into two prongs.
It only requires minimal manual styling and a light application of beard oil to keep it in shape. It is whimsical and allows for a more rebellious, frizzier look. Moreover, if your facial hair does not grow as even or dense as you’d like on your chin, forking it can hide its central sparseness.
While the beard itself can grow naturally and even on the burly side, the moustache gives the hipster beard its unique, bohemian look. If you are a more artsy, creative type and don’t mind waxing the tips of your stache into a pointy, upturned shape every day, this look may be the best choice. It suits oval and heart-shaped faces best and can make you a memorable appearance in any room.
As its name suggests, this extra-long and imposing beard style reminds of the flowing facial hair worn by sorcerers in fantasy stories. It takes many years of tender, loving care to grow, but not significantly more maintenance than the other full beard styles.
As long as it is well-groomed, it can impress by sheer size and burliness and doesn’t require many products or artifices to keep it looking good. The main inconvenience is that washing, drying, and brushing can take longer. But if you want to keep it from getting tangled, you can tie it loosely in a place or two along its length. Just make sure not to tie it tightly right under your chin, as it can cause beard hair loss by triggering traction alopecia.
A long, bushy beard can seem daunting to care for. However, it doesn’t have to be. There are some things you can do to make your life easier. Here are some of the most useful:
While the exact amount of time needed varies from one man to another, it can take quite long to grow a beard if you’re going for good facial coverage and reasonable length. A classic full beard, usually not longer than 5 cm below your chin, covers most of the lower part of your face and part of your cheeks and often takes at least 3 months to grow. But a long, full beard style such as a Bandholz or a wizard beard can be several years in the making,
So, if you are planning on committing to luxurious facial hair, patience is the key. It can sometimes seem like it will never grow out of its awkward phases, where you’ll be afraid you’ll never be able to fix your beard’s bald spots or fill in the sparser areas. However, in many cases, as your facial hair grows longer, it also gains fullness (especially if the strands are thicker and wavy or curly), correcting many problem areas.
If you’ve always wanted a full beard and were never quite able to achieve one, you’ll be happy to know plenty of help is available. The first thing you need to do is to book a consultation with a trichologist. This beard and hair doctor can pinpoint the reason your facial hair is sparse and provide the most appropriate recommendations.
If you are young, you may not have grown into your full beard yet and need to be patient for a few more years. If your genes or hormones are working against you, they may prescribe hair growth medications such as Minoxidil [2]. Or they could suggest effective therapies, such as PRP treatments [3] or low-level laser therapy [4] to help increase facial hair density and thickness. And suppose your beard patchiness is caused by a condition such as alopecia barbae (a form of alopecia areata) [5], they may recommend steroid creams or steroid injections to reduce your symptoms.
However, if none of these treatments works, there is a fast and very effective way to permanently end your beard troubles and grow the facial hair of your dreams. Lately, there has been a rise in the popularity of beard transplants because these safe, painless outpatient procedures can provide excellent results.
A trichologist can check if you can benefit from beard restoration surgery. If you are deemed eligible, you will be happy to know that a beard transplant looks natural and leaves virtually no scarring. And just like you can enjoy a hair transplant for more than 10 years, facial hair restoration can allow you to proudly wear full beard styles for decades to come.
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