Slightly safer than running with scissors, trimming beards with scissors will become part of your beard growing process if your beard hair regularly becomes unruly faster than your other hair. Nobody wants to head to the barber just to trim a beard, so the intricacies of the trim must be understood in our own homes.

Trimming a beard with scissors allows you to have more control over varied lengths than you would if you trim a beard with clippers. Clippers simply don’t have the same precision as scissors possess. If you want to make small changes to your beard’s growth without changing up the whole beard, you’ll have to grasp how to trim beards without trimmers.

A good trim is essential to a healthy, full beard. Depending on your goals for your facial hair, trimming your beard with clippers could prove detrimental to the results you are looking for. That doesn’t mean you have to let your beard run wild.

Another great reason to invest time and energy into understanding how to trim a beard with scissors is if you are looking to grow a long beard. A good set of beard trimming scissors will help you tackle hairs of any length. Even the best sets of clippers may struggle to provide value once your beard grows past a few inches.

To trim a long beard without being forced to start from scratch, a pair of scissors can tackle even the most unwieldy locks.

Just like maintaining the lawn, maintaining your beard is a task best done with a good set of tools. Luckily, trimming a beard with scissors requires significantly fewer electronics than any other beard shaping method, but that doesn’t mean a pair of scissors is the only thing you should have in your arsenal.

A proper beard takes work to grow and maintain, and you don’t want to throw all that work away by cutting corners with your beard’s tools.

Beard Wash

Even the most rugged and raw beards need some tender love and care. A good way to keep your beard healthy and fresh is to give the beard a combination of oils, shampoos, and conditioners that promote moisturization and a healthy-looking beard.

The washes you use will depend on what you want your beard to accomplish. A longer beard will need a rigorous shampoo regimen to keep the mass of hair smelling fresh and inline, while shorter beards may need more oils and specialized products to keep everything looking crisp.

 Make sure that your eventual product shelf has a combination of uses, some for daily use and some for trimming days only. Some products are best for in the shower, while others are meant to be left in after the care routine is finished. Whichever beard products you choose, make sure they work together and all accomplish different benefits for the health of your beard.

Beard Brush and Comb

We’ve all heard different truths about the best way to brush and comb our hair, and our facial hair is no different. Some philosophies advocate for a more hands-off approach, while others endorse daily brushing and combing. It is a safe bet when beginning your beard growing journey that there should be some brushing and combing involved.

The only way for you to know what plan is best for you is to try them all out. A combination of a beard comb and a boar’s hair brush will let you explore your grooming options and find the beard that’s best for you.

Scissors

The most obvious tool on this list, there is no way to learn how to trim your beard with scissors without the scissors themselves. A good pair of beard scissors will pay for themselves after the first cut, and this is one part of the process cutting corners should be especially avoided.

Multi-use scissors may seem like a convenient choice, especially for a beginning groomer. However, the varied lengths these scissors come in does not serve you for trimming facial hair, and it is important that whatever tool you are using is fully committed to your beard.

There is no point in messing around and taking risks when it’s your face that is involved. A good shorter lengthen set of scissors, somewhere around 5 inches in length, will allow you to get the job done right. This length gives you the maneuverability to move around every section of the beard without being too short to reach everything needing a trim.

Any pair of scissors will cut your beard hair, but there are only a few options that will allow your hair to flourish. 

The most important aspect of the beard trimming process comes before any sort of blades hit your hairs. Prepping your beard for its trim will make the task easier and allow you to see which parts of your facial hair need help.

The first way to get some prep in your step is patience. When first growing out your beard, you should allow it several weeks or even months before you start to cut it back. As the beard first begins to grow, it is expanding horizontally just as much as it is growing longer, filling in more and more patches in your face and reaching its final form.

Trimming the beard with scissors will be easier once the beard has settled into its form. This will let you visualize where the longer sections of your beard are and which sections you can leave alone, which is a unique choice you have when using scissors instead of clippers.

Moisturize the beard

When you decide to trim your beard with scissors, it is important to get your beard warmed up. The easiest way to accomplish that is by bringing your beard with you into the shower. Nothing beats a good soak to open up the pores and relax the skin, allowing the hair to hang low.

You want the hair to be at its maximum length and leave no parts of your beard hiding curled up inside the rest of your luscious locks. A beard left unmoisturized will curl up and twist itself to the point where it can be almost unrecognizable after a good shower.

Getting the beard warm and wet will help highlight longer hairs, as it removes other variables that could be affecting your beard’s look. Dirt and oils from normal wear and tear will affect the length of your beard hairs.

Cleaning up the beard and taking care of those anomalies will make it clearer to see what’s left standing. This step is also the time to get rid of any sort of beard oils or waxes you use regularly on your facial hair.

While these products make your beard pop, they also bring all your hairs together, making it more difficult to see where one pattern ends and another begins. A trim job done on a waxed beard may look fantastic, but the next time you see your beard waxless, an entirely different set of lengths could present itself. The only way to be sure your beard will be trimmed uniformly is by eliminating all external variables.

The last important step of the showering phase is giving your beard a good wash with a beard shampoo. Quality beard shampoo will extend the benefits of the shower. These products take the benefits of warm water even further by relaxing the hairs and pores to open up the beard for inspection.

Any product used in the shower should be one that is washed out before the shower is over. Any beard shampoo or conditioner used here will help you understand how to trim your beard with scissors and make sure that the job is done right the first time.

Comb it down

Once you’re out of the showers, reach for your brush and comb before the scissors. Start with a brush. This will help further untangle anything that didn’t get worked free in the shower. It is essential to have the length of every individual hair as clear as day.

A good brushing smooths out the hair and gets it ready to have work done to it. For best beard results, be sure to brush your beard hair and comb it as well. This may seem like an extra step, but there’s such thing as too good of a job when it comes to your look.

While combing, be sure to comb with the grain and then against the grain of your hair’s growth. Keep running your comb through your hair until you don’t meet resistance anywhere – and then once more over for good measure.

Combing your beard is the last step that will allow you to see which parts of your beard need the most focus, so skipping this step often leads to uneven trim.

Now that you’ve prepped your beard fully, you’re ready to trim the beard with scissors. Whether it’s your first trim or you’re wondering how to trim a long beard with scissors, the steps remain the same.

Drake didn’t invent the concept, and it pays dividends when it concerns your beard’s trim. This means when trimming with scissors, visualize where the cuts are going to take place from the neckline on up and cutting with that visualization in mind.

For the first few times cutting your beard with scissors, it’s good not to set too lofty a goal in mind. For most men, this means following along the path laid out by your jawline when trimming your beard with scissors.

Using scissors to trim the beard only becomes possible once the beard has grown a few inches, and chances are on your first cut you don’t want to go all the way back to ground zero. Therefore, you can use your jawline to establish a conservative first trim, meaning it won’t set your growth back too much.

Chin establishes length

Now that you have the area mapped out, begin cutting in straight lines starting underneath the chin. Once you reach the final result, your chin will be the part of your beard that keeps the longest length.

Make sure you keep the chin at a long enough length, maybe even a tiny bit too long, when you first cut. All adjustments to the rest of your beard will correspond to this chin-length, so don’t start chopping away without regard to the rest of the beard.

Luckily, the chin’s importance doesn’t mean it is more difficult to trim, as cutting your beard at the chin length can be accomplished in one slice if you are wielding the right pair of scissors. Make sure the cut is nice and even, leaving every piece at a uniform length, and then continue towards the sides of the beard.

Trim the sides

All parts of the beard develop at roughly the same rate, but that doesn’t mean we want them to sit at the same length. Depending on your taste, most of us enjoy an extended central section of the beard with tapered sides. This means the sides of your beards must be trimmed differently than the center.

Whether that means days where the trim is solely applied to the sides or deeper cuts on trimming day, pay special attention to the balance of the lengths of the side of your beard to the rest of it.

Ignore this beard trimming balance will lead to bushy sides and jawlines. That may have worked in the civil war days, but nowadays is rarely seen as a fashionable option. Currently, extended sides are representative of a lazy beard grower. Maybe that is the fashion impression you want to send across, but be wary of the statement your beard is making.

Facial beauty lies in its symmetry, and whether we realize it or not subconsciously we look for everything to be centered when it comes to the face. Weird bits and pieces sticking out to the side send subconscious red flags to any beholder.

Clean up the Neck

One of the more overlook aspects of trimming the beard with scissors is the neck area. Most beard growers never get a beard length in the neck area that requires scissors over clippers, but that doesn’t mean that the neck should be ignored by proper scissor trimming.

The neck hairs will also correspond to the length of your chin hairs, and you don’t want any parts of the neck area to grow longer than what you established at the chin. Hairs sticking out from the underside of the neck will look quite unruly when the front side of the chin is well maintained.

Luckily, this allows the neck trimming process to be one without harsh consequences, as the best way to trim the neck is in a way that makes it impossible to be seen. Trim it in such a way that it is tucked in behind your chin line and it won’t give you any trouble.

Once the hairs have been cut, the work is not over. Now is the time to apply any leave-in products you may use to boost your facial hair. While no products are essential for beard growth, there is surely a beard oil or conditioner out there that will improve your look.

These products will also help your hairs adjust to their new lightness in a way that won’t leave hairs springing all over the place. Give your beard a quick brush through or a simple wipe down to remove any trimmed hairs that are still hanging on.

Next, apply your product thoroughly and according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If your product requests a wet beard, use a warm towel to properly soak through your facial hair.

This is a proper and thorough technique to trim your beard. It may seem arduous at first, but your beard will repay your hard work with a glowing rapport later. Keep that in mind and recognize that your beard trim likely won’t be perfect after just one sitting.

Eventually, you should expect to trim your beard with scissors once every few weeks or even once a month, depending on your beard growth goals. However, for your first few beard trimming techniques, we highly recommend examining the trim daily and seeing what adjustments need to be made.

The only guarantee is that your beard won’t be perfect after your first trim, and paying attention to the spots that need work is the best way to learn what areas to look for in the future.

Additionally, the beard will spend some time reacting to the products and trims you applied and may have a completely different identity after a night to sleep on its new energy. You may find new areas to work once the beard has shifted its shape.

Voila, you now know all there is to know about beard trimming with scissors! Be patient and have fun exploring all the different ways there are to trim beards with scissors. While best employed as a combination plan that also trims a beard with clippers, it is possible to remain old school and use only scissors.