How to Fade a Beard? Expert’s Advice and Tips

Beard fade is an art, and not everyone excels in it.  It requires precision and mastery, which comes with regular practice.  You might have noticed the difference between a beard cut at home and barbershops.  It’s simple because barbers know how to fade a beard.  Without fading your beard, it will look like something is missing or unappealing.

No matter what beard length you have, this article will teach you how to fade a beard and create a seamless flow to the neck, cheeks, and sideburns.  Other than attracting the opposite sex, there are several other benefits you must know of faded beards.  To execute a successful beard fade at home, we will also provide you with a list of tools.  And the story doesn’t end at fading; you must also know how to maintain it.

To make you look smarter, we have also compiled a list of faded beard styles, which you can go through to match the trend.  Lastly, grooming tips will help you blend and trim your beard perfectly.

So let’s get started.

Why Should You Fade Your Beard?

As said, a faded look is appealing and attractive, but what are the other benefits of it?  Read on to more about the advantages:

Train Your Facial Hair

Beard fade includes beard trimming and blending your beard hair in different lengths.  Besides, if it is done right, it will complement your face.  Doing so will automatically train your facial hairs to grow in a particular direction.

Attractive Look

Beard fade is all about upgrading your existing facial hairstyle.  It creates a neat look that enhances your overall appearance.  The faded effect on the sideburns is eye-soothing, which is why it is one of the attractive beard styles.

Hides Blemishes

Growing a beard means saying no to razors, which means fewer post-shaving hassles.  A full beard is excellent at hiding acne, pimples, and blemishes.  Similarly, a beard fade also hides blemishes and diverts attention to other facial areas.

Confidence Builder

A Beard style, if done right, can complement your face and hairstyle.  If it does, it boosts a lot of confidence in you.  So, it is advisable to select a faded beard style that matches your hairstyle.

From the above discussion, we hope you know why you must sport a faded beard.  Let us look at the tools that will be required to fade your beard.

Tools Required For Beard Fading

These are the tools that barbers use at the time of fading your hair or beard style.  So, make sure you add them to your grooming arsenal before starting to fade your beard.

Beard Comb

Do you know what offers satisfactory and painless results when beard trimming or shaving facial hair?

It’s cleaning your beard before trimming or shaving.  And how would you be able to do it?  It is easy to remove pollutants from your facial mane with the help of a beard comb.  It also untangles knots and prepares your facial hair for trimming.

Beard Trimmer or Clipper

A Beard trimmer is one of the most used grooming tools when fading beards.  The ability to snip off the facial hair tip to make the beard uniform is what makes beard trimmers on this list.

Before beard trimming, make sure that your beard is clean and well-combed to eliminate the knots and tangles.  Use no-grades during the initial trim under the chin to decide the length.

Now that you have trimmed off excess hair under the chin, it’s time to attach grade 2 to your clipper to trim down hair below your ear lobe to the chin.  You must maintain distance between the jawline and trimmer/clipper when cutting hair from the earlobe to the chin beard.

Keep doing this around every beard edge to remove excess facial mane.  Once you chop off excess hair, you can start fading your beard.  For this, you can use the clipper blades without a grade to carve a short guide of around 10mm. It should be somewhere between the top part of the ear to the middle of the ear. Do it on both sides, and it’s ready to fade.

Traditional Razor

The Razor comes into the picture when you trim off and achieve your favourite fade style.  Use a razor to make the edges sharper and neater to form a uniform-looking beard.

So we hope you have gathered the mentioned grooming tools.  Let’s start to know how to taper a beard.

How to Fade A Beard At Home?

Here we have separately discussed each part of your face to ensure you get better clarity about how to fade a beard:

1. Maintain Your Facial Hair

You know your beard grows uneven from the beginning, which requires beard trimming to maintain the same length.  You can use a beard trimmer and set your desired length to start a quick trim.  Trim excess bulk (stragglers) and make your beard even from all sides.

2. Fade Beard Neckline

A fading neck ensures a more natural look and blends the beard into the skin.  You can start with a length a bit shorter setting than your facial mane to maintain the overall length.  For instance, if your beard length is four, you can use three as the trimmer’s length settings.

Now place your finger horizontally above Adam’s apple and mark the line above your index finger.  Trim an inch or everything below the beard neckline.  To fade the beard neckline, use scooping motion and against the grain method.

Once you determine you have cut a full length, lower your guard setting by one.  Keep trimming the rest of the beard.  Also, make sure you clean everything below the neckline with the help of a razor to highlight a crisp and clean line.

3. Fade Cheek Line

As soon as you clean everything below Adam’s apple, it’s time to clean up your cheeks.  We recommend carving crisp cheek lines.  Create a straight or slightly rounded line from the bottom of your sideburns and connect it with the top line of a mustache. 

Do it on both sides and clean up the upper cheek area to highlight the crisp cheek line.  Do not nudge the clean line that you have created just now. It depends on personal preference to keep the cheek line natural or not.  However, you must trim stray hairs (stragglers) on the upper cheeks.

4. Trim Mustache

Trimming mustache hair requires precision and patience.  Firstly, comb down the mustache to check the actual length.  Then start trimming with the edge of the blade by following the top lip line.  It will help you trim all the hair that is over your top lip line.  You can also achieve a tidy line by trimming the top line of your mustache.

5. Fade Sideburns into Beard

It is similar to a fading neckline.  It also requires the same process of setting one length lower than beard hair.  Place your trimmer pointing towards your head and start trimming the middle of the ear to the upside in a scooping motion (against the grain).

After doing this, follow the same process, but this time it should be with the grain method.  If you fail to do this, it will create a hard line, and you don’t want that, right?

Use one length setting lower than the previous one and trim your beard slightly above the place you previously started.  Do it on both sides to even out your beard.

Here is a video to summarize the fading of all the parts of the face:

Now that you have faded beard hair- let’s deal with the rest of the hair on your beard.

How to Match Your Beard With Scalp Hair?

All your efforts may go in vain if you forget to match your beard fade with the rest of your hair.  So, let’s know it in a stepwise manner.

Step 1: Mark Long Hair Location

The jawline is where you might see long hairs growing wildly, which requires trimming.  We suggest setting the trimmer one length lower than the jawline hair.  Start trimming the area one inch up from the bottom.

Step 2: Trimming an Inch by Inch

Once you start trimming an inch, lower down the length settings as you move up, and repeat the process. Next, move up another inch and start fading the beard.  Moving up closer to the skin depends on how low or high you start to trim.  Keep moving up in one-inch increments to fade your jawline hairs.

Step 3: Follow the Process on the Other Side

The process may be time-consuming, but you need to complete it anyhow with precision and zero compromise.  The speed comes with the practice, so keep doing it as and when you grow beards.

You have successfully faded your beard, but do you think it will remain the same and doesn’t require any maintenance?  Read on to more about how you will maintain your faded beard style.

How to Maintain Faded Beard?

One thing you must keep in mind is that beards grow at a faster rate than head hair. Therefore, it will require more upkeep.  If you are ready to be committed to your beard fade and its maintenance, here are the steps that you should follow.

Step 1: Trim Every Week

We suggest you trim your beard every week if it is of the right length.  It will restrict and maintain the ideal length.

Step 2: Try Different Beard Products

There are ample beard care products in the market, out of which picking up the right product becomes a daunting task.  You can try all the products one by one, which is not a feasible option, or you can go through the best beard products for a better idea and quick selection.  In your opinion, you must use shaving gel or cream before shaving your facial hair.

Step 3: Apply Products on Wet Beard

When applying any beard product, wet your beard and the skin underneath it.  It will ensure that your product is properly applied.

Step 4: Apply Moisturizer

Once you do a clean shave, make a habit of applying moisturizer to prevent itching, irritation, and dandruff.  You don’t want white flakes visible on your accurately faded beard.

So that’s how you will be able to fade a beard and maintain it.  But don’t you want to sport any beard fade style?  Let’s have a look at a few fading types for your beard.

Types of Fade

Short Beard Fade

Everyone grows a beard, which at one point in time is shorter.  Maintaining a shorter beard fade style is slightly difficult, but the primary thing you must know is how to fade a beard.

It is ideal for the ones who don’t have heavy growth on the cheeks.  Besides, it is also advisable to grow hair on sideburns and use a trimmer to keep the cheeks and neckline neat.

Long Beard Fade

You can also fade a longer beard by applying the process mentioned in the article.  In fading a long beard, you need to keep an eye on the length.  You can use a beard comb, oil, and balm to maintain longer beards.

Bald Fade with Beard

Beard fade is a versatile style since it complements all face shapes.  Even the bald look goes well with beard fade since the beard balances the entire look.

Taper Fade Head Cut & Beard

It requires shaving at the back of the head and is one of the simplest types of fade.  The fade can go higher as it depends on the one who wears it.

These are a few fading styles that can complement your face.  Lastly, let’s make you familiar with some effective tips.

Effective Tips for Faded Beard Shape-Up

• Always prefer a simple beard fade style when creating at home
• Visit a barber for styling beard fade shape-up
• Regularly trim to remove excess bulk and maintain your final beard fade
• Buy quality beard care products to upkeep your final beard fade
• Do not fade patchy beard

These are a few tips to keep in mind before and after you fade your beard.  Now let’s answer some commonly asked questions.

Conclusion

In our opinion, you should start with the longest setting on the trimmer and lower down as soon as you work your way up towards the head from the bottom, i.e., neck.  Once you have slightly shorter hair, you will then have to make them uniform.

The beard fade will not get affected by the environment and remain intact.  It makes seamless flow to small beards with the blending that is as short as the length changes.  Also, it builds confidence and makes you stand different from others.  A bearded man can sport different beard styles and do a lot more with beards.  No matter what beard hair length you have, try to fade at least once to look different and stylish.