Facial hair affects your look, which is understandable, but why does it translate to older? Growing your hair gives you a more mature appearance in general, and beards are no exception.
Clean shaves and new haircuts naturally connote the appearance of younger males, although this is due to cultural expectations. And, because beards only grow with age, we are hardwired to think of bearded men as older than clean-shaven males of comparable ages.
So, Does having a Beard make you Look Older?
It has been scientifically proved that having a beard makes you look older. According to 2013 research, men with beards might appear up to eight years older than guys without beards. Also, the longer the beard, the older the person seemed.
Greying and beard style are two more factors that contribute to men seeming older with beards. As you become older, the color of your beard hairs may start to alter. For example, a grey beard is associated with elderly guys and will make you appear older than your colleagues. You may also get an older appearance by dying your facial hair.
The sort of beard you wear is also important. If you have long beards that aren’t well-trimmed, you’ll start to seem older; the same is true for full and spherical beards.
While having a beard makes men appear older owing to these causes, not all guys who have a beard look older. Keeping beards nicely groomed and tidy may make a man appear younger. Particularly when he has a ‘baby face.’ If you want to add a few years to your appearance, consider growing your beards longer or fuller.
When Growing a Beard, there are a Few Rules to Follow
The average man has between 10,000 and 20,000 hair follicles on his face, and once they begin to grow, keeping them clean requires some forethought. There are several things you should be aware of if you want to develop a healthy beard.
❕Hope for the Best but Prepare for the Worst
Get ready for the ugly period if you’re growing out your beard for the first time this month. Your facial hair may be spotty and uneven, with no definite growth pattern that complements your jawline.
❕Practice Great Hygiene
Believe it or not, washing their face is inevitably linked to their shaving regimen for many guys. No shaving, no washing. However, filth accumulates, obstructing pores and increasing discomfort.
You can relieve irritation by using a deep scrub face cleanser that gently cleanses your pores and replenishes your skin’s moisture. Apply a daily moisturizer to all parts of your face, especially the beard line, where the itching sensation is most intense.
❕Buy High-Quality Comb
Using a wooden tooth comb aids in the uniform and smooth application of your oil or balm on your face. The improper comb can cause split ends and entangled, harsh spots in your beard, creating split ends and entangled, rough patches.
❕Shape is Essential
When your beard has reached the correct length, it’s time to break out the trimmer and start defining your beard neckline. Trim your cheek line as high as feasible for a clean and crisp appearance. To retain a tight control on your trim, do the top mustache lip just beneath the nose and lead over your clippers with a pair of mustache scissors.
❕Avoid Constant Touching
You’ll want to scratch, massage, and shave the entire irritating mess away, or at the very least define it. A first-time grower may hurry to touch up his lines, but it’s better to avoid over-shaping your beard until you can see its full potential.
It will also help you understand your hair type and development pattern better. One good rule of thumb is for you to wait four weeks before attempting to shape their beards.
❕Moisturize your Beard Daily
Your hair growth will begin to resemble a genuine beard by the end of week two and into week three. Dandruff, split ends, and dry, sensitive skin are all symptoms of poor beard care. Therefore, it is important to moisturize and nurture your beard in order for it to develop fully and healthily.
❕Familiarize the Size of your Face
Understand the corners of your face where you’re sculpting your beard. Understanding your facial shape can help you decide how to cut your beard. Stick with a simple oval shape for beginners because it looks excellent on practically everyone and is difficult to mess up.
Ways to Seem Younger while Sporting a Beard
The earliest obvious indications of aging can be quite painful. The first crease, the first grey hair. All of these factors might have a significant detrimental influence on your self-esteem. However, there are techniques to lessen the most negative impacts of time.
👍Maintain the Health of your Grey Hair
Grey hairs are one of the earliest symptoms of aging, with most men seeing their first in their thirties, whether you consider them a sign of wisdom or just that you’re starting to become wise. This is because skin pigmentation naturally lightens with age, and hair pigmentation follows suit.
So, no matter how modest the results, bottled hair color will not restore your youth. It will simply serve to emphasize how heartbroken you are over having lost it. You can use a silver shampoo once or twice a week to help remove brassy, yellow tones from grey hair.
👍Get Enough Sleep Every Night
We all know how important getting sleep is, but it also plays a part in keeping you looking young. Conversely, people who did not get enough sleep had increased indicators of skin aging, such as fine wrinkles, uneven pigmentation, and decreased skin flexibility.
That’s because sleep aids skin regeneration and repair in a variety of ways, including increasing human growth hormone, decreasing inflammation, and lowering cortisol levels in the body.
👍Eye Cream is Vital
The skin around your eyes may be renowned as the “windows to the soul,” but it performs a different role. Crow’s feet, along with browlines, are the first face wrinkles to appear, beginning as early as your mid-twenties. Look for moisture-binding compounds, including ceramides, peptides, and hyaluronic acid.
Caffeine and bark extract, for example, can help cleanse the eyes and decrease puffiness, making them seem brighter and more young.
👍Wear SPF for Protection
The most common cause of noticeable aging is sun exposure. SPF protects against UV damage, which can accelerate photoaging. In addition, it inhibits pigmentation, decreases collagen breakdown, and prevents fine lines and wrinkles.
👍Trim your Beard
Hair on a man’s face, a sign of physical maturity, masculinity, and authority, instantaneously ages him — for better or worse. You may get away with going wild in your twenties, but by your thirties, and especially as you approach your forties, huge, untamed beards seem rougher.
Since your cheeks and jawline lose definition as you age, maintaining your beard properly maintained will help you seem younger. A short and neat style is preferable, especially if you have grey hairs in your beard, which seem heavier in longer beards.
👍Have Great Posture
Poor posture is unattractive. However, as you get older, the cartilage between your vertebrae stiffens and shrinks, making it more difficult to stand up straight. While you can’t halt the process, there are steps you may take to mitigate its consequences.
Developing your core, glutes, and hamstrings — all of the important muscles that keep you upright. Planks, squats, and romanian deadlifts are all exercises that target the muscles that help you stay aligned.
Reasons Why Women are Drawn to Men with Beards
Facial hair has historically been used to suggest that a guy is healthier, more socially dominating, and more manly than other males. Then, hundreds of years later, we find Vikings with thick, flowing beards to show off their barbarian attitude.
While a clean-shaven appearance isn’t necessarily frowned upon in the twenty-first century, thousands of years of evolution have conditioned our minds to believe that they symbolize the same thing as previously, which they don’t most of the time.
✔️Men with Beard is More Masculine for Women
Women consider men with facial hair to be more manly and more confident, hardworking, giving, and truthful than men without facial hair. According to the study, for long-term partnerships, women regarded beards to be more appealing than clean-shaven faces. More masculine looks are associated with physical strength and social assertiveness in women. It might also signify a man with a strong immune system.
✔️Men with Beards make Better Fathers, only According to Survey
Bearded guys make better fathers, at least according to the impression they give off to women. Bearded males are perceived as better partners in long-term relationships, according to one of the aforementioned studies. In addition, the greater the quality of the beard, it appears that women believe a male is a better caregiver. Full-bearded men are regarded to be better protectors and to spend more on their children.
✔️Beard Length also Play a Part
The length of one’s beard is an important factor in one’s beauty. But, surprisingly, various beard lengths and varieties emit distinct signals. So, while long, thick beards aren’t considered the most beautiful by women, larger ones signify something different.
✔️Beards are Attractive but Mustaches are Debatable
Only 6.44 percent of women liked mustaches on their own, whereas 43.27 percent preferred beards on their own. Most women, however, favored a full facial coverup, with 50.29 percent preferring both a mustache and a beard as their ideal grooming choice.
How to Coordinate your Beard and Face Shape
It is vital to match the contour of your beard to the shape of your face in order for them to work together. It will also take some time to figure this out, but you will finally find the finest beard form to compliment your face.
➖Know your Facial Structure
Before you start trimming, visualize how your beard will appear after you’re through. The most attractive beards complement your facial form. Barbers advise shaping your face into a balanced, extended oval form. You may look up beard styles and the facial types they suit online.
Keep the sides longer than what’s beneath your chin if your head is more square than round. It’ll make your face look more balanced. Trim the sides and grow out the bottom for rounder faces. The hairs behind your chin lengthen your face.
➖Style it as a Goatee
The goatee seems boring, but it’s simple to grow and looks excellent on a wide range of guys. Unfortunately, it necessitates maintaining the hair near to the scalp. Except for the mustache and the hair around your mouth and chin, your face remains bare.
And because oval-shaped faces already have the right proportions, this design is appropriate for them. Of course, you can also grow your beard out a little, but don’t go overboard.
➖Wear a Full Beard
The main point on a triangle face is your jaw. Perhaps you spent some time thinking it stood out too much. Make the most of it by filling out the sides with your beard. Allow your beard to grow down to your jawline and on your cheeks. And because you don’t want your point to be too pointy, shape the hair under your chin into a rounded form.
You can maintain your beard short or lengthy. You may also keep your cheekbones clean and your jawline short for a chinstrap effect.
➖Get a Circle Beard if you have a Square Face
Circular beards are highly popular and are ideal for balancing out square features. The idea is to hide your sharp angles, thus there’s no better approach than to grow a beard with no angles. Allow your mustache and chin hairs to grow out. Keep those sections short and rounded, and trim any hair that extends beyond them.
Phases of Beard Gowth
While what occurs to your beard and how it grows differs from man to man, certain stages are, for the most part, constant.
Everything begins somewhere, and your beard growth timetable starts with a freshly shaven face. During the freshly shaven phase, the essential thing to remember is that you want your face skin to be in the greatest condition possible before beginning to grow a beard.
🧔🏻First Stage
During the first week, most men experience little change. You’ll see some stubble, maybe more, which resembles a few splashes of color in a painting that, ideally, will become a masterpiece. In summary, what you see in the first week is not what you’ll receive in the end—far from it.
🧔🏻Second Stage
While you’ll have a general idea of what your beard will look like after the first week, things will become a lot clearer over the next four to six weeks. At this time, you should be able to see where your facial hair growth is focused.
This is the stage at which the novelty of growing a beard may or may not fade, but it is also a time for breaking new territory. It can also be a difficult development period since beards do not always grow in a neat, even manner.
🧔🏻Third Stage
A month’s worth of growth generally results in a full beard or anything like a full beard. But, of course, this depends on various circumstances, and some men will require a longer time than others to get a full-fledged beard.
Your beard will still be patchy in places, but it will also have greater patches of lovely, luxuriant growth. Depending on your age, you may even detect some grey whiskers, even if you don’t have any grey on your scalp.
🧔🏻Fourth Stage
At four to six months, you should have the sort of robust beard that has filled in and appears like it will for the foreseeable future. By this point, you should have a consistent beard maintenance regimen down and be at ease with life as a bearded guy.
However, at this stage, your beard requires more management and care than ever. The beard will take on a life of its own in many respects, with stray hairs appearing and some hair going one way while the rest of the beard points another.
🧔🏻Fifth Stage
And by six to nine months, the beard should be fully grown, and you should be able to rock it like a pro. However, it is also a period in which growth appears to come to a halt. That is natural, as is the shedding that occurs as a result of frequent brushing. On average, men shed 50 to 100 hairs every day.
Elements Influencing Beard Growth
If all guys were the same and lived the same lifestyle, they could probably anticipate what type of beard they’d have with reasonable accuracy. However, they are not all the same, which is why men experience the stages of beard development differently.
❕Your Genetics Plays an Important Component
Genetics inform that if your father or grandpa grew a long, healthy beard, we have a decent chance of doing so as well. Understanding your ancestors might help you understand what sort of beard you might develop or why it’s growing in a specific way, yet this isn’t always the case because a certain feature may not be passed down.
❕The Level of Testosterone Factors In
Men with greater testosterone levels have a stronger possibility of developing an abundance of facial and body hair. This is because the body generates testosterone, which causes sparse hair to thicken and darken. And because of dihydrotestosterone, an androgen that gives men their masculine traits but may induce hair loss, men with greater testosterone levels are frequently more prone to baldness.
❕The Number of Times you Work out
Exercise helps to increase testosterone levels, and as previously said, testosterone aids in the growth of a healthy beard. So, keep up the good job, gentlemen. And not only will you look and feel better, but so will your beard.
❕Your Ethnicity
Your race might also have an impact on the growth of your beard. For example, Caucasians and African Americans can often grow larger beards, but Asian males have more difficulty growing a full beard.
❕Habits such as Smoking
We are well aware of the health risks associated when you smoke. However, one risk you may not be aware of is that smoking can cause hair loss, including beard hair loss. It will just be one more reason to give up smoking for good.
❕Your Age
Your age influences the rate and quality of your beard’s development. Around the age of 13, males begin to acquire facial hair. Between the ages of 25 and 35, the most plentiful and quickest hair growth occurs. After that, men’s growth rates tend to slow as they age, but not usually dramatically.
❕What your Diet is
A good diet benefits many facets of our lives, including beard development. Having a well-balanced diet rich in protein, vitamins, and minerals keeps your beard healthy while allowing it to develop to its maximum potential.
It is critical to ensure that your diet has lots of protein because hair is made up of protein. Whisker strands can become brittle and weak because of a protein deficiency.
❕The Number of Hours you Sleep
Getting adequate sleep is another technique to boost the quality and rate of development of your beard. The body’s temperature drops during sleep, resulting in enhanced blood circulation, including circulation to hair follicles and roots. The greater the number of nutrients that can reach the hair follicle and roots, the better.
❕Your Stress Level
It’s not always a joke when someone states that stress has caused their hair to fall out. And because stress decreases one’s immune system, it can affect the growth rate of both beard and scalp hair. And a weakened immune system causes slow hair growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is it true that having facial hair makes you more attractive?
A: According to the survey, women believe thick stubble to be the most appealing, while men think that heavy stubble or a full beard is the best.
Q: Is it healthy to shave one’s beard?
A: Shaving your face eliminates hair, dirt, excess oil, and dead skin cells, which can help to brighten your skin’s appearance.
Q: When does a beard turn white?
A: It usually begins around the age of 30, although everyone will ultimately go grey; it just happens at different times of life for different people.
Q: Why do I appear older with my beard?
A: It was discovered that having a beard adds ten years to your age.
Q: What kind of facial hair are appealing?
A: The most appealing facial hair is the “short stubble” beard.
Final Thoughts
According to science, clean-shaven males appear younger than their hairy counterparts. Indeed, beard development might make you look older, but there are various ways to get a young and appealing appearance like a bearded man. These approaches, however, are all dependent on heredity, grooming, beard maintenance, and personal style. Nevertheless, with the right beard style, you may take years off your existing appearance and age.
He is originally from England and now lives in the United States. He has a degree in cosmetology and is a resident style expert.
However, his experience came from working in many different salons and spas for over 10 years, so he knows a lot about different grooming products and techniques.
He is also an expert on men’s hair, and he has helped countless men find the perfect hairstyle for their face shape.
- Timeless Elegance: Style Tips for Staying Dapper at 50 and Beyond - February 21, 2024
- Look and Feel Your Best: Essential Men’s Vitamins for Hair Skin and Nails - February 21, 2024
- A Comprehensive Guide to Men’s Hair Care Routine - February 21, 2024