If you have some experience in trimming your own beard, you can take it a step further. Beyond techniques of lining, fading, and good beard trimming tools, you can choose the best beard style for your face shape. Fortunately, there are a number of variations for each shape – you don’t need to stick to one. However, the best place to start before you learn how to shape a beard is to pick your favourite. That will help with honing your skills so that you look presentable without the need to go to the barber all the time.
You can become a barber yourself, at least for your personal needs. If you are interested in how to shape a beard that complements your face, take a look at these most typical beard styles that have stuck through the years and still look fresh.
How to Shape a Beard for a Square Face
Square faces are characterised by a strong jawline that gives a somewhat distinguished look which goes well with a long beard. However, that doesn’t mean you cannot keep it short. Here are some of the shorter beard styles that will look great on you:
Circle (French) Beard
Start by trimming the neckline and the cheeks, leaving moustache, chin and the hair that connects them untouched.
- Use the trimmer to round up sharp corners. Make sure you achieve a circular symmetrical look to the best of your abilities.
- Next, do a close shave of the cheeks applying a clear shave gel to keep the circular shape.
- Finally, define the circle beard by tightening the lines. Do this by drawing precise, straight, outward lines with a single razor.
This process will ensure clean shaving lines.
Royal (e) Beard
Shaping a royale beard style is almost identical to trimming a circle beard. The only difference is that you will trim the hairline the connects your moustache and your chin. This leaves you with a nice clean style that elongates your face. Be careful not to go too deep with shortening the connecting hairline. Use a small trimmer to shape this section.
Goatee
Goate or a petite goatee beard is ideal for gentlemen that don’t want to cover the lips bt still like to soften the square jawline.
The first step to shaping a goatee beard is to trim all your face except the area around your mouth. Be careful not to remove too much hair from the sides and don’t forget to shave the moustache.
Because you’ll have to be precise with the goatee shape, especially on the neckline, you will need to use a single razor or a razor blade.
A very small (petite) goatee elongates a square face even more.
Beards for the Rectangular Facial Shape
If you want to showcase your prominent features, accentuate the sides of your face even more. You can do so by trimming one of the following beard styles:
- Mutton chops: long sideburns with a moustache
- Gunslinger beard: horseshoe moustache connected to low sideburns
- Chinstrap beard: take the edge of your angular jawline with a circle around the chin
- Chin strip: a tiny hair strip stretched across the centre of your chin
The main point of shaping a beard for a rectangular face is to keep the bottom short and the sides longer.
Beard Styling Hacks for the Round Face
Unlike sturdier facial shapes, a round face needs some structure and elongation. To accomplish that with your facial air, keep it longer at the bottom. The trick of cutting an angular line around the cheekbones helps, too.
Fading the beard downwards or to the face edges creates an illusion of a thinner face. Here are the most fitting beard shapes for round faces:
Short Boxed Beard
Make sure your beard is freshly shaven all over to the length you want to keep.
To “box” your face with a neat short beard, wrap the jawline with a precise line by using a trimmer.
Don’t go too high when shaping the jawline. But also don’t go too low when shaping the cheek line. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a chin strap that may broaden your face.
Leave the hair strip that connects the moustache to the jawline.
Van Dyke Goatee
Bringing memories to the medieval era, this classic goatee style never goes out of fashion.
To shape the Van Dyke beard with a pointed bottom, you need to first grow it.
- Clean shave you cheeks, leaving longer, fuller moustache, and chin hair. If you keep it on the longer side, you’ll need a comb and pomade to help it stay in place.
- Use small scissors to shape the moustache above the lip line and to contour the triangular shape at the bottom.
- Keep everything neat with a small trimmer.
To provide fullness and depth to elegant goatees, you can colour your beard.
Balbo Beard: How to Trim It
Shaping a Balbo beard is a strong statement message, requiring some advanced trimming techniques. However, you can still do it at home and maintain the long, bristling goatee if you want to keep some volume around your beard. Moreover, if you want a massive beard without going overboard with length the Balbo beard is the perfect solution.
To trim a Balbo beard:
- Keep the moustache and the hair around the mouth as natural as possible, shaving off cheek hair.
- Leave more volume in the middle shin strap and clean both sides of the strip.
- Trim the bottom close to the neckline shorter.
- Clean shave the hair below the chin, maintaining a straight line that will connect to the sideburns
- Remove hair from cheeks until you shape a straight line that connects to the jawline.
- Trim below the moustache towards the chin but keep the moustache ends wide.
- Apply soothing beard oil to smooth out any rough edges.
The most challenging part will be to shape the middle strip. But with a little practice, you’ll master this badass beard style in no time.
How to Shape a Beard for the Oval Face
Unless you already know it, you can hear it from us for the first time. You’re lucky – you can wear almost any beard style. You can shape it to meet 2020 beard trends or leave ti scruffy and patchy, pulling off the au-naturel look.
Although an oval face can give you the excuse to go messy, you still need to maintain a decent cleaning and grooming routine to look awesome. With today’s choice of products, it doesn’t take much. You can be done in under half-an-hour. Just make sure you discover and highlight your best qualities. Shaping a killer beard is a simple way to do that.
