How To Fade A Beard

All of my bearded dudes out there know how difficult it is to adequately fade your beard, achieving that highly desirable and seamless flow from hair to side burns.

How To Fade A Beard

It doesn’t matter what shaped beard you have, just so long as you execute it well. 

A massive part of creating that effortless look, is making sure that your beard is well faded. If you’re just getting started out with fading yourself, or you’re looking to improve your technique, we’ve got you covered, bro.

Simply keep reading to find yourself on the way to amazing fades. 

What Is A Beard Fade?

Before we get started with our handy guide, first, let’s take a look at what exactly a beard fade consists of for those of you out there who don’t know. 

Essentially, a beard fade is just like a sideburn or head fade, but specifically for the beard region. It’s a fantastic way to spruce up your beard, and experiment with your look.

Over the years, it has become more and more popular to add fades to beards, and is seen by many to be an integral part of grooming. 

You’re essentially trimming your beard in a particular way that creates an incredibly smooth transition between your beard and the surface of your face.

When you are fading your head region, you’re blending longer hair with shorter hair. Bear fading, on the other hand, involves chin, cheek, and sideburn blending. 

Bear fading works well with a whole host of different face shapes, and is also great for complimenting a range of different hairstyles, including pompadours, and slick backs. 

Step By Step Guide For Fading A Beard 

Now that we’ve covered what a beard fade consists of, let’s move on to discuss how you can create one yourself.

Although it can seem tricky at first, with continued practice, and following these steps as precisely as possible, you’ll be on your way to that rad fade. 

Step 1

In order to fade your beard properly, you’ll need to trim the bulk of it first before jumping in with the fade itself.

This is especially true if your beard is bulkier, because you want to transition to appear gradual to achieve that flawless look. 

To do this, make sure that you wash and dry your beard, before grabbing your trimmers, and placing them on their longest setting.

Get as much of your beard length off as you need, moving against the direction of your hair growth with the trimmers. 

The more hair you leave on, the more obvious the fade will look, so it depends on what you want to achieve.

If you want it to be more subtle, then trim the hair off gradually, not taking too much off at one, until you’re satisfied with the length. 

How To Fade A Beard

Step 2

The next step in the process is to sharpen up your neckline. You want to make sure that it’s as clean cut as possible, without any unruly stragglers.

You should do this by brushing your beard hairs downward with a comb, if it’s long enough, then place your finger in a horizontal position underneath the area you mean to trim. 

After you do this, slowly trim against this frame. Start in the middle, then work your way outwards, moving towards the outer portion of your jawline.

After you’ve done this, then you can go ahead and do the same on the other side. 

After you’ve created this smooth line, and you’re satisfied that it looks symmetrical on both sides, you can move on and get rid of any of the stragglers underneath. 

Make sure that when you’re doing this, that you don’t accidentally cut too near the line that you’ve just made. It’s best to take this slow to be as careful and as precise as possible. 

Step 3

Next, you can go ahead and trim the lines of your cheeks. The way you do this is completely up to you, but we recommend that you go for the crisp look. 

You can do this by first creating an ever so slightly rounded line, moving from the tip of the mustache, to the bottom of the sideburns.

After you’re satisfied with the line on one side of your face, you can go ahead and replicate it on the other. 

After you’ve done this, you can do what you did on the neck earlier, and clean up any stragglers with the trimmer, making sure not to bump into your line. 

Next move on to tidy up your mustache area. Follow the top lip line by using the edge of the blade, this will help to get rid of any unruly hairs that you have growing over that area. 

If you want to make your mustache look super neat and tidy, you can trim the top line too. 

Step 4 

Depending on the setting that you just used to trim your beard, set it to one shorter. This will be the setting that you’ll use for the fade.

Begin by trimming one inch above the area of your jawline, and trim one inch toward your sideburns. 

Now you can go ahead and lower the setting down one more notch, and trim another inch toward the direction of your sideburns. 

Essentially, you need to carry on repeating this process until you reach the topmost portion of your sideburns, moving only one inch at a time. 

Finish up by blending it in with the side portion of your haircut. 

Final Thoughts

We hear you dude, trimming your beard to reach the perfect fade can be tricky business.

With enough practice however, and following the steps that we’ve outlined above, you’ll be looking amazing in no time. Remember to thank us!

Matt Park
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