How to Soften a Coarse, Wiry Beard

It was the fall craft fair, and The Troll had to duck under the awning to reach my table. Big as a bridge pillar, gentle as a lamb, and wearing a beard that looked like a bramble bush had grown straight out of his chin. "Children try to pet it," he said sadly, "and then they pull their hands back like they touched a thistle." He wasn't asking for a new look. He just wanted a beard people could hug.

If that's you, here's the short answer. The best beard softener isn't one magic bottle. It's a routine: wash gently only two or three times a week, follow every wash with a rinse-out conditioner, then put oil on the skin and a beard butter on the hair every day. Coarse beards are thick, dry and often curly by nature, so they need moisture added back and then held in place. Do that for a week, drop the habits that rough the hair up, and you'll know by the next weekend whether it's working for your beard.

Why some beards feel like steel wool

Your beard and the hair on your head are different animals. Beard hair is usually thicker, often curlier, and grows at odd angles. Then life piles on. Here's what makes a beard coarse, roughly in order of how much you can do about it.

• Genetics. Some guys are simply born with thick, wiry, kinky beard hair. You can't change the hair you grow, but you can change how it feels.
• Dryness. The skin under your beard makes a little natural oil, but it doesn't travel far down a thick or curly hair. The ends of a 3-inch beard are months old and bone dry. Wind, sun and a furnace running all winter make it worse.
• Harsh soap and hot water. Bar soap, body wash and a lot of head shampoos are built to strip oil. Use them on your beard every day, under a steaming hot shower, and you're scrubbing away exactly what keeps hair soft.
• Heat styling. A blow dryer on high, held close, every morning, dries hair from the outside in. Same for straighteners. The cuticle (the outer layer of each hair) roughens up, and rough cuticles feel scratchy.
• Split ends. Once the ends fray, they snag on each other and feel like straw. No product glues them back together. They have to be trimmed.

The beard softener routine, step by step

Each step does a different job, so the order matters. Washing clears out grime and old product. Conditioner smooths the hair while it's wet. Oil feeds the skin. Butter coats the hair and keeps it soft for the rest of the day.

A few notes on doing it right. Work the oil into the skin first, pushing your fingertips against the grain, then pull through to the ends. Warm the butter in your palms for 10 to 15 seconds before it touches your beard, or it'll go on in clumps. If you've never used one, our guide on what beard butter is covers amounts by beard length.

Wondering whether you can skip a step? Conditioner is the one guys drop most often, and for a coarse beard it's the one I'd keep. We wrote up the whole case in do you need beard conditioner?

A 7-day plan to soften a coarse beard

Here's what a week looks like in practice. It assumes you shower every day.

1. Day 1 (reset). Wash, condition for a full 5 minutes, towel-dry, then oil and butter. Snip the obvious split ends.
2. Day 2. Rinse with plain lukewarm water only. Oil, a small scoop of butter, brush.
3. Day 3. Same as Day 2. If your beard looks shiny or feels greasy by lunch, cut the butter in half.
4. Day 4 (wash day). Wash, condition, oil, butter, brush.
5. Day 5. Rinse only. Try butter at night instead of the morning. Long and very dry beards often do better with the extra hours.
6. Day 6. Rinse only, oil, butter, brush. Skip the blow dryer today, or use it on the cool setting.
7. Day 7 (wash day). Full routine. Then decide what to adjust: more butter on the ends, less on the cheeks, or one more wash day if your beard picks up a lot of dust or sweat at work.

A week is enough to tell whether the routine suits your beard. Damaged ends won't fully recover until they're trimmed off, so keep going and give each new inch the same care.

Brushing and combing a wiry beard

Brushing does two things for a coarse beard. It carries oil and butter from the roots out to the dry ends, and it trains curly, unruly hair to lie in one direction. Pick your tool by length:

• Short to medium beards: a boar bristle brush. Firm bristles get down to the skin and push product through thick hair. Brush down and out, the way your beard grows.
• Long beards: a wide-tooth wooden comb first, then the brush. Start at the ends and work up toward your chin in small sections, like untangling a fishing line.

Go easy on a soaking-wet beard. Wet hair stretches and snaps more easily, so towel-dry first and never rip a comb through a knot. If a fine-tooth plastic comb catches on every pass, it's doing more harm than good.

For the bigger job of shaping a beard that grows in every direction, see how to tame a wild beard.

What makes a coarse beard worse

You can do the routine perfectly and still undo it with a few habits. Watch for these:

• Washing with shampoo or bar soap every day. This is the big one. Daily stripping leaves even good conditioner with too much work to do.
• Scalding hot showers. Hot water pulls out oil fast. Turn it down for the last minute, at least on your face.
• Blasting it with a hot blow dryer. Towel-dry and let it air-dry, or use low heat from a distance.
• Skipping trims. Split ends travel up the hair if you leave them. A small trim every few weeks keeps the ends from turning to straw.
• Leaving chlorine, salt or sweat in it. After a pool, beach or a long day in the heat, rinse with plain water before bed.
• Only treating the surface. Butter smoothed over the top looks nice and leaves the skin and inner hair dry. Get your fingers in.

One caution: if your skin gets red, bumpy or itchy after starting any new product, stop using it. If it doesn't clear up, see a dermatologist.

Beard softening products for a wiry beard

People searching for the best beard softener are usually after one of two things: a rinse-out conditioner or a leave-in that keeps hair soft all day. Coarse beards do best with both. Here's what I set out for The Troll, all in his scent of Sandalwood Pipe, Refreshing Stream and Bright Spring Air:

The Troll Beard Butter (4 oz, $26.99): The workhorse for wiry hair. It's shea, cocoa, kokum, illipe nut and mango butter with a little beeswax, so it gives a touch of control over flyaways without real hold. Want something you can shape with? Read beard balm vs. beard butter first.

The Troll Beard Oil (1 oz, $18.99): Castor, coconut, sweet almond, argan and jojoba oils. This is the one for the skin under all that hair. Buying both? The Troll Oil & Butter Kit is $42.99.

The Troll Beard Conditioner (8 oz, $24.99): Shea butter, aloe and a long list of plant oils including avocado, olive and argan. Apply it in the shower, wait 5 minutes and rinse. The conditioner adds Oak Moss Bridge to the scent.

Not sold on the Troll's woodsy scent? Browse the full beard butter and beard conditioner collections, or see everything with his name on it in The Troll collection.

FAQ

One last thing

The Troll came back to the market three Saturdays later. Same giant, same bramble shape, but when a little girl reached up and touched his beard, she didn't pull back. She patted it twice like a dog and announced it was "squishy." A coarse beard doesn't have to be a prickly one. It just needs someone to look after it.

Your beard, your story.

— The Wizard

Keep reading in the Wizard's Library

• Do you need beard conditioner?
• What is beard butter? Who needs it and how to use it
• The elements of a perfect beard care routine