It seems you have grown enough beard hair and are looking for products to maintain your facial real estate. Or maybe you want to gather information about beard care products. In either case, you have landed up at the right place. Out of numerous grooming accessories, today, we’ll be discussing the beard balm benefits.
Beard balm has always been a replacement for beard oil, and the progress and popularity beard oil have gained, beard balm wasn’t able to. It doesn’t mean beard balm holds no importance or is less worthy. It has its own set of benefits that helps it to stand different from other beard accessories.
These benefits are only achievable if your beard balm contains the right set of ingredients. And not only this, there are other factors to consider while checking on for the benefits. If you are a beginner, you must know what beard balm is and the right way to apply the beard balm to achieve its benefits. Lastly, this article will also let you know the difference between beard balm and other beard care products.
So keep reading and unveil the benefits of beard balm.
Table Of Content
6 Beard Balm Benefits
Here are the benefits that make your investment worthy and beard healthy.
Improves Appearance
Unlike beard oil, beard balms contain beeswax which makes them less greasy. Both beard products moisturize the skin, but beard balm is one-step ahead. It helps in improving the appearance of the face as well.
The presence of beeswax, it makes sure that your unruly beard hair is in proper shape. It keeps the beard and the skin beneath healthy. Also, it prevents the skin from turning red or dry.
Style & Tame Your Beard
If you want both styling and shaping your facial hair, then beard balm is a convincing product. It saves you from spending additionally on beard wax. Of course, it depends on your personal preference if you want both the products in your beard grooming kit.
Thanks to beeswax, beard balms also offer a similar hold as beard wax does. You need to apply it to your facial hair and brush them accordingly. Using a quality beard brush will help you to organize the whiskers as per your preference. Applying once or twice a day will keep a check on the coarse hair and maintain your beard style.
No Beard Itch
Now, this is something serious, annoying, and irritating. Imagine you are on a date, and you keep scratching your cheeks or neckline in front of the love of your life. Embarrassing, right? Well, it is common in the early weeks of beard hair growth, but if it persists, it’s time to opt for a beard care product.
The first thing you might use is beard oil, but alone a beard oil could not prevent excruciating itching. You want to add beard balm to bolster the effectiveness of beard oil. How? Beard balm ensures moisture retention by creating a lipid layer on top of the facial hair. And to fight against irritation, you require something that seals the moisture.
Here, you can apply beard oil on the facial hair and skin beneath it and then use the balm. It helps to lock the moisture, resulting in irritation-free skin.
No Beardruff
Before learning how to prevent beardruff, you must know what makes it visible on facial hair? Well, the skin produces a natural oil known as sebum oil. It originated from sebaceous glands that stimulate hair growth in the body.
The production of sebum oil varies from person to person, and it keeps your hair healthy. Any depletion will produce negative results. From itching to beard dandruff or attracting unwanted particles, it could be anything. All this happens when your skin cells die at a faster pace.
Since your body’s natural oil is not sufficient enough to fight against external particles, you require a beard product that can become a replacement. And one of the ingredients that are similar to sebum oil is Jojoba oil. Besides, carrier oil and butter do a fantastic job in ensuring proper moisture. Beard balms containing any or all of the above ingredients will prevent beard dandruff.
Now you might have a question; how does beard balm work? The balm containing all the ingredients will make several layers on the skin. The carrier oil will hydrate, and butter will coat the beard, restricting from white flakes to stay. In the end, the wax reinforces the hair follicles.
No Nesting of Unwanted Particles
Since you are an outdoor person, your facial hair remains vulnerable to different elements, such as cold weather, humidity, sun, and rain. It leads to a decrease in natural oil that can affect your healthy beard. It might damage or give space for unwanted elements to settle on the beard.
In such cases, you must use the balm to protect it from vulnerabilities, especially scorching heat and extreme cold. The presence of beeswax and carrier oil creates a protecting layer, nourishes the skin beneath the facial mane, and shapes the flyaways.
Offers Dusky Look
Are you someone who loves dusky beard growth but couldn’t get it due to genetics and other factors? If yes, then beard balm is the solution to hassles. It won’t guarantee new hair strands, but it will make it look duskier.
Natural ingredients like shea butter, beeswax, and cocoa butter have a thick texture that adds volume to your beard hair. For a better result, you must apply the balm as soon as you wash your face with water. Doing so will make them look heavy, thick, and dense.
So, these are the benefits of using beard balm. But do you know what it requires to offer such benefits? Well, it could be a decision-making factor as well. So keep reading the article so that it would be easier for you to select the right beard balm.
Essential Beard Balm Ingredients
If you look around the market, you will find hundreds of beard balms, but do you know not all balms offer the same benefits. It all depends on the ingredients; natural blends are preferable while synthetics or chemicals are avoidable.
A high-quality beard balm is a blend of natural ingredients, which are as follows:
- Carrier Oils
Carrier oils come from extracting out different plants, such as Jojoba, Argan, and Sweet Almond. It also supports the shea and cocoa butter that is the reason for fluffy, soft, bushy, and healthy-looking facial hair.
The primary goal of the carrier oils is to nourish the skin and beard. Jojoba oil resembles sebum oil and is the best even for sensitive skin types. It eliminates the risk of allergies and offers desired results. You must be choosy while picking up the balm for yourself and should use the one that contains carrier oils.
- Essential Oils
Essential oils cater to offering fragrances to beard balms. From citrus to sandalwood to woodsy and peppermint, essential oils do the job of providing a pleasant aroma. And if it combines with cocoa or shea butter, it acts as an undertone.
These essential oils that contain tea tree oils act as an antiseptic agent that prevents acne and beardruff. While buying a beard balm, do not miss out on these oils to ensure nourishment, fragrance, and quick cleaning properties as well.
- Beeswax
The only difference between beard oil and balm is the consistency. And the solid and thick consistency of balm comes with the inclusion of beeswax. This beeswax makes sure that all your stray and coarse hair is in shape and straight. It holds your unruly hair and offers a decent look.
Besides, it even conceals moisture to eliminate irritation and itchiness. Perhaps, it is one of the reasons why many beard products include beeswax.
- Shea Butter or Cocoa Butter
Butters is the reason why beard balms are easily pliable, and you can spread them evenly. If you don’t find shea, cocoa, or kokum butter in the balm, then it would be difficult to emulsify the balm.
The butter is rich in moisture, resulting in them not letting the beard or skin dry out. With it being easily spread over the beard hair, you can make sure that your beard is well-nourished and moisturized.
These are the natural ingredients that you must consider while picking up the best beard balm for yourself. But, do you know what you must avoid? Keep reading the next section so that you pick only natural and organic.
Harmful Chemicals You Must Avoid
Having natural ingredients, blend balm should be in your grooming kit, but there are a few noxious components, which you must avoid at any cost.
Sulfates
Sodium Lauryl or Laureth Sulfate are two common names that you may find in beard balms. This ingredient results in drying out the beard and the skin, making it rugged and coarse, and prone to split ends. Any product that contains Sulfates is advisable to avoid.
Polyethylene Glycol
Polyethylene Glycol is a harmful ingredient that causes hair loss or hair fall. It can make your beard and the skin dry and rough, resulting in an unpleasant beard structure and stripping hair.
Synthetic Fragrances
Many men consider fragrance-based beard products, thinking that their beard might smell foul. Well, it’s a wrong myth. If you wash and groom your beard well, it is not going to emit a foul odor. Adding synthetic-based products will not only weaken the hair follicles but will disturb the pH balance as well.
Always consider essential oils for having a fragrance-based beard balm. They are pleasant and will not clash with your cologne.
Mineral Oil
Though it may sound natural and organic, you must avoid this ingredient. It hampers beard growth and cell production. It resembles petroleum properties that make your beard heavy and dull.
Pigments
Pigments are the reason why you may experience a dull tone or color of your beard. It can even cause skin irritation and itching. Also, you may experience an unpleasant smell and coarse beard hairs.
Isopropyl Alcohol
It is a type of Alcohol that is common as an ingredient found in most beard products. It cleans the beard well, but along with cleaning unimportant elements, it also flushes out moisture and sebum oils, which are essential for the skin and beard.
So this is a list of avoidable chemicals that might negatively impact the performance of the beard balm. Let’s now look at the simple steps to use a beard balm.
How to Apply Beard Balm?
Here, you will get to know the application of beard balm, and a detailed guide is linked to the article.
- Wash your face with beard wash or shampoo and warm water. Dry the facial mane out with a towel. Do not wash it with hair shampoo and wash it once or twice a week.
- Scoop out a dime-size amount of beard balm, and emulsify it between your hands. Do not use fingers for application.
- Apply the balm on the neck, sideburns, and mustache.
- Style your beard with a comb or brush.
The article doesn’t end here; what’s remaining is the key differences to know between beard balm and its substitutes.
How is Beard Balm Different From Substitutes?
Even tea and coffee are substitutes, they are still different when it comes to ingredients and serving the purpose. Similarly, beard balm is a substitute for beard oil or wax, but when it comes to offering value to the beard, it stands different from others.
Beard Balm
To some extent, beard balm can be called a by-product of beard oil and wax. Why? Because it is a combination of oils and waxes, which means a blend of essential ingredients required to make beard oil and wax.
It includes butter and oils, and the texture even resembles wax. It is easy to emulsify and apply to the beard. The oils cater to conditioning and moisturizing while the butter holds and maintains the style of your beard.
Besides, beeswax bolsters butter and makes the balm solid to resemble it like beard wax. However, it doesn’t provide the same stronghold as the wax does to your beard. The more beeswax, the stronger it holds. So, you must check the percentage of beeswax included in the beard balm.
The sebum oil depletes once the hair starts growing longer, resulting in moisture loss, skin dryness, and irritation. The butter is a moisturizing agent, but to last it for a time, it requires beeswax. That’s where it plays a crucial role in retaining moisture.
The shea and cocoa butter relieve skin wrinkles, dryness, and irritation issues along with moisture retention. Aloe vera also plays a crucial role in maintaining hydration and acts as a skin-healing agent. Beard balm works best on shorter beards.
Beard Balm vs Wax
Beard wax is a grooming accessory that many men add to wear different beard styles. The mustache wax is also a similar product, but it caters to styling mustaches. Light, medium, and strong are three different types of hold.
The stronghold makes sure that your stubborn hair stays in place for a long time, no matter how much you travel. All thanks to the high amount of beeswax that makes it possible to wear any beard style.
The primary goal of the beard wax is to hold the coarse and unruly hair, but the presence of essential oils does offer moisture to fight against irritation and dryness.
Beard Balm Vs Oil
Beard oil is entirely different from both balm and wax. It focuses on nourishing and providing essential nutrients to your beard and skin underneath it. That’s the reason the oil reaches the roots from where the hair follicles sprout up.
Beard oil is a product that you can start from the time you notice a beard growing on your face. Using beard oil won’t cause irritation and itching. It contains essential and carrier oils that provide both nutrients and fragrance to your beard.
Beard oils don’t look at the length or size of the beard. It offers shine and less weight to the beard. Beard balm offers moisture and hold, while beard oil only nourishes and moisturizes.
FAQs:
1. What does beard balm do?
A beard balm acts as a leave-in conditioner that moisturizes, conditions, shapes, softens, and styles your beard. You get multiple benefits using beard balm and that too at an affordable price.
2. How do your beard oil and beard balm together?
Firstly apply beard oil on your beard and spread it evenly using a beard comb. Then, applying beard balm will help to seal the moisture and offer desirable results.
3. How often do you use a beard balm?
It is advisable to apply the balm every day for better and healthy beard growth. The natural blend balm is free of side-effects. The balm contains kokum butter, sweet almond oil, coconut oil, essential oil, vitamin e, and argan oil. In short, it is a mixture of natural oils, butters, and wax.
4. What is the purpose of beard balm?
If you want your hair shaft to remain in a place throughout the day, then you must apply beard balm. It makes sure that along with acting as a moisturizing agent, it also holds your unruly whiskers.
Conclusion
After shopping a lot of beard care products, we can say that none can beat the effectiveness of beard balm. The benefits of using beard balm are incredible and you can count on it. It is easy to use and safe. If you are suffering from a dry, coarse, and rugged beard, then the balm is a solution to improve your appearance and health of the beard.
We hope this article finds you well and you get sufficient information on the benefits of beard balm. You can subscribe to our website for more such good reads. Also, you can share your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions.