Best Beard Wash & Cleaning Tips
After a workout, late night, or long day, you know when it’s time to hit the shower—but are you forgetting about your beard? Keeping a clean beard is an important part of your overall grooming regimen. With all the work you’ve put into growing and trimming, you don’t want to compromise your style with a gross, unwashed beard. Here’s why you should be washing your beard regularly, and our best steps (and products) for the job.
Importance of washing your beard
Reason #1: Health & Cleanliness
Fact: your face can be home to bacteria, dead skin cells, and other unwanted debris. Washing your beard—especially with the help of a beard and face wash—helps remove all that bad stuff, as well as oils that build up after time. What that means for your face is that a simple habit can help prevent the occurence of trapped hairs and irritated skin following your shave, and a smelly beard.
Reason #2: Appearance & Style
If that first reason wasn’t enough for you, washing your beard will also help with the overall look. With the right process and products, you can help protect your face against dry, flaky skin, razor bumps, and redness. A cleaner beard is also generally easier to shape and style.
Reason #3: Longevity
A good beard wash should help your natural oils hydrate your beard without looking greasy. This keeps your beard growing strong while looking fuller and healthier and keeping the skin underneath hydrated too.
Bottom line: keeping your beard clean is an all-around good idea. However, the method, product, and frequency matters. Let’s dive into that.
The features of a great beard wash
In the history of shaving (which we’ve been a part of for quite some time), beard wash is a relatively new product, but one that’s definitely here to stay. When finding the best beard wash for you, think about the following:
The Ingredients
A beard wash is a mix of a cleanser and a conditioner. It should help your skin feel clean, light, and refreshed, while also helping the facial hair feel soft and smooth. That means the best beard care products usually contain nourishing ingredients like shea butter and aloe, as well as healthy oils like argan and jojoba oil. Harsh chemicals commonly found in regular hair shampoos can actually dry out your beard and irritate your skin.
The Scent
Beard wash is great at preventing your beard from smelling bad, but you’ll also want to make sure you like the new way it smells. Consider different scents and your preferences. Our King C. Gillette Beard and Face Wash blends coconut water with our signature scent: citrus, ginger, pepper, mint, geranium bourbon, lavender, and Tonka bean. Alternatively, if you have sensitive skin, you might want a beard wash that’s fragrance-free instead.
Easy-to-Use
It’s hard to keep a habit going if it’s tough to keep up. As beard washes have increased in popularity, so have the diversity of products. It’s important to find the right one for you and your routine. An easy pump bottle you can keep beside your other toiletries is usually a solid option.
Another few products to consider: beard oil, beard balm, face wash, and moisturizer. Check out our piece on beard care products for more info.
How to wash your beard
Trust the process. Washing your beard is important and simple, so you shouldn’t skip any steps to save on time. Jump in the shower or wash your face first, then follow these steps to wash your beard:
Step 1
Dispense a small amount of beard and face wash in your hand and lather up.
Step 2
Work later into a wet beard.
Step 3
Rinse thoroughly.
That’s it—that’s the process. We recommend washing your face and beard twice a day: once when you wake up, and again before you go to bed. We also recommend following it up with some quality beard oil, beard balm, or both. Read more on that here.
If you have especially sensitive skin, you might just want to wash your beard just once a day. Chat with your dermatologist to be sure.
With this guide, you should have everything you need to keep your beard fresh and clean (we’ve also got this Clean Kit to help). Looking for more advice and recommendations? Check out the rest of our shaving tips.
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