How To: Wear a Scruffy Beard

As much I love to shave, I know that there are many men who don’t. Regardless of the reason, there is a solution for those men who rather not deal with it.

One of the most popular choices is the “scruffy beard”. The biggest advantage is less maintenance, and for many, no more risk of irritation!

So here are the basics!

**Tools needed: Adjustable Clippers w/ comb guards & Trimmers

Clippers:

Adjustable clippers have a lever attached to them to give the option of trimming the hair to different lengths. The lowest setting is “0″ which will trim the hair shortest; whereas, the highest setting is “1″ which will leave the hair the longest. For the most part, beard scruff should not exceed a quarter of an inch in length: this can be achieved by using the clippers at the lowest setting with a #2 comb-guard attached or with the clippers adjusted to the highest setting of “1″ plus a #1 comb-guard.

Steps:

1. Always adjust your clippers to the highest setting first in the effort to achieve the desired length. This will prevent you from taking too much off at the outset. If need be, adjust to the lower setting to go shorter.
2. Start from the base of the neck and trim upwards (towards chin), and go against the grain.
3. Always overlap the last area trimmed to guarantee consistent beard length.

**Advanced Techniques:

When wearing scruff, the neck can at times look much more unruly than the rest of the face. So here are a few steps on how to “fade out” the neck line.

1. Use the lowest clipper setting on the bottom quarter inch of your neck to give you the shortest length; adjust the clipper setting every quarter inch or so to achieve a smoother visual transition as you move up the neck.
2. Adjust the blade settings to blend any lines.

Trimmers:

Once you have achieved the desired length, the final step is to make sure your mustache is neat and not hanging over you lip. However, since the purpose of scruff isn’t to appear neat, your primary goal is just to remove the excess hair.

• Position the trimmer at the center of the mustache and start at the lip line, where the hair tends to “overhang”. Carefully continue to trim toward the outer edges of the mustache as you follow the outline of the top lip as a guide.